Back into running

Posted on July 11, 2010 by Tom Bammann

Late last year I was really into the XC mountain biking, and starting to become mildly athletic and maybe even the most skillful I’ve ever been at it. It was great fun, and I had a riding partner, Nick. Nick started riding a few years ago, and his consistent, regular, hard riding, now also with some (or a lot of) road riding, has earned in some pole positions in the Mens Elite category with the Adelaide Mountain Bike Club. It’s great to go riding with Nick because he makes me ride hard. Then at the start of 2010, I entered the Tour Down Under Challenge ride with him, and did a 160km ride. I don’t think I had ever ridden more than about 100km, so this was huge. Either had Nick really either (maybe a bit more than 100km, but not much). To make a long story short, Nick pulled me through almost the entire way – very grateful for his wind shielding! To make a long story short, I finished the ride, and I was now all round the fittest XC and road cyclist I’ve ever been.

After that ride, I felt like I’d done enough riding for a while, so I stopped. I joined an online gaming clan, and started playing computer games. Now six months later, I consider myself unfit. Due to a combination of seeing myself unfit, and seeing a photo of myself after finishing a Melbourne Marathon a few years ago, I decided it’s time to get back into marathon running. It won’t happen until well after the wedding, as I have a lot of work to do to get back into being fit, let alone running fit, or long distance running fit. My plan is to just do regular short runs (no more than 6km on weekdays, and no more than 12km on weekends) before the wedding, and ensure that I maintain good stretching sessions between runs, including some abdominal muscle work.

This plan will help to keep me fit for the wedding day, and ensure that I set my body up to be able to handle a more gruelling training program where this time I won’t cause any injuries. So I went for a 4km run today, and ouch my legs hurt!

Melbourne Marathon 2006

Posted on October 16, 2006 by Tom Bammann

Last weekend Morv and I went to Melbourne for the weekend, for the Melbourne Marathon. Morv did the MaraFun 7.5km event in an impressive time, and I slacked off by 36 seconds compared to my performance in the Adelaide Marathon this year.

Melbourne Marathon October 8th 2006 – 3:26:46
Adelaide Marathon August 27th 2006 – 3:26:10

Considering I had only done literally one run since the Adelaide Marathon, I was hardly trained up for the Melbourne Marathon. In this respect, I’m extremely happy to have just finished let alone got so close to my best time!

The problem I had with the Adelaide Marathon was dehydration, so for the Melbourne Marathon I supplemented myself with the usual electrolyte drink containing sodium and potassium for a few days beforehand, however this drink I tried now also contains magnesium, which particularly helps to hydrate the muscles. I’ve also been taking regular glycosamine supplements, which is pretty much nutrition for the joints. So hopefully I won’t have to have a knee reconstruction before the age of 30!

The problem I had with the Melbourne Marathon wasn’t dehydration, but going too hard at the start. The reason I went too hard at the start was because I met this guy Andrew at the start line who was the most motivating person I’ve ever met in terms of running. He convinced me I can do that 3:15:00 time I’d been hoping for. I sat on a 3:12:00 pace for about 28km until I realised I wasn’t going to be able to finish if I kept doing this pace. By about 30km Andrew passed me and spurred me on for another km or so, and then by 32km I was walking on and off! I possibly lost it mentally when my GPS lost reception and didn’t pick up again. It really motivates me seeing whenever I start to decrease in speed slightly, so not having my little virtual training partner abusing me when I started to slip really didn’t help. Also, I didn’t have my DNB music this run because I realised at the start line that I didn’t have the extension piece for my earbuds of my mp3 player to reach the actual mp3 player! That was a huge setback.

It’s been just over a week now since the run, and I’m feeling pretty well. I think this has been my best post-marathon recovery to date. I even did the corporate cup 7.2km run on Wednesday (3 days after the marathon) albeit in 50 minutes rather than the usual 30 minutes!

Apart from the run, I had a great weekend with Morv. We met up with her friend Susan during the day and did some shopping. That afternoon we went to the MADsens house for an early dinner. I love seeing my cousins – they’re coming here for Christmas, and it’s going to be the best Christmas ever! Sunday morning was the run, and after passing out in the hotel room for a few hours we went to Lygon St. for dinner, and came home. I was so hungry by the time we got to dinner and here’s the photo to show it! I even saw my dream motorbike. What a weekend!

what i’ve been up to lately

Posted on September 17, 2006 by Tom Bammann

Adelaide Marathon

This was a couple weeks ago, but I’ve been “a bit busy”, such is my favourite line at work these days. After talking to someone for a couple minutes and you feel like getting back to work, or just getting away from talkign to them, I say “anyway, gotta go, i’m a ‘bit busy’” – regardless of how NOT busy I am Anyway, my bro Mike and Dad entered the event too (10km run and 10km walk respectively) so that was great to have them come out and participate too. Mike had a rough time with blisters afterwards, and Dad had sore legs the next day I think, but both of them have just started getting back into running and walking, so soon it won’t be painful for them, rather it will be 100% enjoyable.

Anyway back to me, I got a new PB of 3hrs, 26mins (4 minutes faster than last years Melbourne Marathon). I was set for a 3hr 10min finish until the last few kilometres when everything cramped up and I was destroyed. At the finish line I got stuck because I had to dig my fingers into my quads or otherwise they wanted to snap into a cramp, so I couldn’t let go of my leg. It didn’t hurt or anything, just needed time to be massaged out. The volunteer helper people tried to push me through the finish area so I didn’t clog everything up, but I just had to tell them politely not to touch me. Later on, Morv gave me a really long massage that hurt lots and lots even though she was barely touching me (my fault for running 42km, not hers!) Even still after a 1 hour massage, I was completely ruined and could hardly move. I think this might have been from getting on the p**s with Tom V, Nick, Gary on the Friday night before.

Morvie & Tom 3 Month!!

Morv and I had our 3 Month on Friday! woot! She took me out to dinner at the Snake Charmer on Wednesday night. Definitely a big contester to the Raj on Taj Indian restaurant I normally go to. Delice! (That is delicious pronounced how Shaun Micallef would say it after having a sip of some random drink after sitting on a random chair at the start of one of his shows) Anyway, Thanks Morv it was a great night!!

City to Bay Fun Run

Best City to Bay I’ve ever done! Even though it was my worst time by 5 or so minutes, it was great to start at the back of the pack with Mike for the full run. After I ran with him for a few minutes, using my GPS watch to help him work out what a good 65min pace was, I left him to go hard and try to match my previous times. Unfortunately it succed hardcore having to push my way through everyone constantly for 12km, and apart from probably running an extra few hundred or so metres (from all the sideways movement), having to slow down and speed up constantly to get past people, I also p*ssed a few too many people off by bashing into them for my liking. In particular, there were 4 or 5 or so girls running SLOWLY abreast each other right at the finish line, and I swear I yelled very loudly “coming through” but they didn’t move, so unfortunately they felt the need to yell out “idiot” and “jerk”. Hopefully by next year if I build up some race cred I might be able to start with the elites or something. They start a minute before everyone else you see.

Afterwards, I met up with Mike and we took drinks back along the course for Nai and Morv which I think they appreciated. I feel sorry for Nai who had mega blisters from her shoes being too small. I know what it’s like to have bad blister problems and hopefully I can help her sort them out.

Indoor Soccer

I’ve started playing indoor soccer again in a team that Chris Soo started up. Our team name is “The team that very occasionally doesn’t lose!”. Quite appropriate, given we lots 16 neil today, and they lost 10-2 last week. This was my first game today, and heaps of people couldn’t make it so we got Morv to fill in to play as well She did an awesome job and is an indoor soccer superstar professional! I’m trying to convince her to just charge at the guys with the ball, and because she’s a girl they won’t tackle her so she’ll get the ball by default. But the team this weak was pretty gnarly looking, so it probably wasn’t a good first game to try these sorts of shenanigan tactics.

Work / Portland / Montreal, Canada

On Sunday I left to Portland with Ben from work. We tested soil for a wind farm for a couple days, which was definitely interesting. Unfortunately there wasn’t really much to do in Portland at this time of the year, so we got a little bored at nights. It’s a small town between Mt Gambier and Goolwa (Goolwa in Victoria, not the suburb of Adelaide). It comes alive in the holiday season over summer, with lots of tourists. Anyway, our stint in the field was very successful and we came home a few days early. I left my wallet at the airport on Wednesday which wasted most of Wed afternoon at work as I desperately rang everywhere looking for it. Got it back eventually, thanks to several very honest people, the key person being a worker Hudson’s Cafe at Adelaide Airport (ground level) that handed it in. Thank you so much you’re a champ!!

This coming Friday I’m going to Montreal, Canada, to attend a seminar on this software used for earthing of distribution systems. It will definitely be extremely intersting and I’m looking forward to it a lot. I enjoy numerical software, CAD, and FEA software, so this is exactly the kind of thing I should (hopefully!) be good at doing at work. It will no doubt take a few months to become reasonable at it, and intimidating for reasons I won’t publicly speak about, but I’m definitely glad to be doing this. I feel extremely fortunate to be given this opportunity.

Latest Beats

Roni Size. OMG he’s coming to Adelaide but I”m going to miss it as I’ll be in Canada!! ARRRGHHHHH!!!!! I missed out on the Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets, and now I’ll miss Roni Size. Just so you know, Roni Size, DieselBoy, and Klute are probably my three all time favourite DNB artists – which basically means my three all time favourite overall artists! So I’ve been listening to all my Roni Size music which I don’t seem to have listened to for over at least one year, and i’m loving it! I was getting a little tired of a lack of variety of DNB music I seem to have these days, but I’ve just got to learn to shuffle my CD’s in my big stacks of CD’s around a bit, and wipe and re-download new music to my mp3 player. Also, I think I need to go through and check that all my mp3-alised music is properly tagged so it can be searched for and sent to my mp3 player.

So my favourite album at the moment is definitely “in the mode” by Roni Size. There is this one track in particular “Centre of the Storm” which has the guy from Rage Against the Machine (Zack de la Rocha). It’s totally fierce, and should be awesome for running marathons to. It’d totally make me feel “pleasantly angry” which is exactly the kind of emotion I like to feel when running as it helps the release of lots of adrenalin. I was talking about types of music to someone at Morv’s friends 21st (Christina) last weekend for when you’re out running, and I really think it’s quite interesting to find out what people listen to. It can really help to just make you start to feel a little angry from the music you listen to, because it stops you thinking about the pain your legs go through. When I say I like to feel angry, I don’t really mean I”m going to go biff someone, I just mean it makes me not give a stuff about things. In particular, the pain of my legs.

Another Roni Size track I really like is “Lucky Pressure”. I would love to put these mp3′s up on my blog but I don’t think the record company would appreciate it. If anyone is reading this and would like to hear them, leave a comment and perhaps I’ll just put up 20 seconds of each track and provide a link to where to buy them from In fact I’ll just do it anyway! Here they are They’re deliberately in really bad quality to help prevent roni size from suing me :S

Lucky Pressure:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Center of the Storm:

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Both these tracks are from In The Mode which you can buy for yourself and myself at this link, which is with Full Cycle Records. Unfortunately I don’t think he has a standalone website but let me know if you find one. Roni Size, I think you are a fool for not purchasing www.ronisize.com

Other wicked tracks are Brown Paper Bag, Play the Game, Dirty Beats, and OMG the list is endless! Best DNB artist, please buy me all these CD’s – in particular In The Mode

Other music I’ve been listening to a lot is a Cafe Del Mar album “La Caina Vue Mer”. It’s very relaxing and good for listening to just before bed, or whilst typing massive blog posts.

Lawn

Things on the lawn front are looking quite promising. I’ve done a little bit of back lawn transplantation to try and encourage the santa ana cooch to grow into the shaded areas of the lawn. I think it will be possible, but will be hard to keep through the winter. Weeds are extremely minimal after the extensive effort I spent last year. A bit of oxalis still which is under control, and a tom thumb type looking weed which I forget what it’s really called, still remains, but also under control using Paul Munn’s B6. All winter grass is dead from my mid-winter wintergrass poisoning. The very odd bit of kikuya keeps popping up every few months, but becoming a lot less frequent giving the huge dosages of Round Up I give it whenever it does, muahahhahaa. The only other weed is the bindii-eye which has popped up just a little bit, but nothing I haven’t been able to keep under control by hand and with B6. I guess this is the seeds of which was dropped last year before I got really stuck into my hand-removal regime. I should really take photos of our lawn now for completeness of my blog, but I don’t really want to until I’m totally happy with it.

This summer, absolutely MINIMAL water will be used on the lawn, and since we’re extending a veranda in to the yard this will further help to keep water down. I’m working hard to get the roots deep deep down, and the soil conditioned to absorb water as best it can, all before the summer kicks in.

Run from Glenelg to Mt Lofty

Posted on August 6, 2006 by Tom Bammann

Yesterday I did my 3rd ever marathon length run (at least that I have recorded). The other two being the 2005 melbourne marathon and my first rogaine. I had always wanted to try this run, and I thought it was about time to do it, given that I should be training for my first ever Adelaide marathon in three weeks time. I wanted to run from Glenelg jetty to Mt Lofty summit.

Morv graciously dropped me off down at Glenelg, because running from home to Glenelg to Mt Lofty and then back home again was a bit much (at this stage)! Since it was the first beautiful fine sunny day we’ve had for some time we went for a little walk on the beach which was probably a good leg stretch/warmup before running.

So I ran from the very end of the Glenelg jetty, up Anzac Highway, Greenhill Road, Glen Osmond Road, and up the old freeway along the cycling path. I stopped shortly up the cycling path to tape my toes which were blistering. I regret not taping them earlier, before they started (my toes after the run developed blood blisters, ewww)! I went up past Eagle on the Hill, at 2hrs 30mins and 22.5km. I kept running up to Crafers, and purchased another 1.2L of Powerade Isotonic at the Crafers BP. I’m probably the only person to ever have purchased Powerade from that store, that would actually have NEEDED it The guy at the Crafers BP still doesn’t believe I ran from the Glenelg jetty, even after I showed him the GPS map Click on the thumbnail to see my GPS evidence.

I then kept running up past the Mt Lofty Botanic Gardens, to the summit, and did a couple light stretches, as I’d been running uphill for a fairly long time (3hrs 23mins), and so the hamstrings that do most of the work when you’re running uphill, that take a break when you’re running downhill, would be likely to cramp up. Sure enough they did, so I slammed down my remaining 1 litre or so of Powerade to help relax those crampy muscles. They still cramped up a bit, but I was able to negotiate a comfortable zone and running style with them, until it flattened out down on Bartril Spur Track (running down through Cleland).

I then kept running from Waterfall Gully Road, to home, but that was only 40.4km. You can’t brag about running 40.4km, because that’s not even a marathon, so how could I go out that night and brag about my run, people would know it’s below my standard. So I kept running around the block, and then the other block, and up and down the road, until my GPS said 42.00km THEN I had truly run a marathon. But not only was it a marathon, it was a Glenelg to Mt Lofty and down again, marathon, with an almost 1km ascent. You don’t have that 1km ascent in a normal marathon.

So this run took me 4hrs 46mins. I’m aiming for a 3hr 15min or so marathon in three weeks in Adelaide, and hopefully a sub-3hr marathon in Melbourne in October. The sub-3hr mark gains much respect in the running community. I’m pretty happy with 4hrs 46mins for this Glenelg to Mt Lofty run, because even if I ran a 2hr marathon, it’d take at least 2hrs 46mins to climb up a 1km high ladder.

In total, I consumed 3 bannanas, 2.2L of Powerad Isotonic, 4 GU Energy gels, and 3.0L of water. I could comfortably consumed a few more energy gels and a couple more litres of Powerade. Next time I will.

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