I missed beating my 2nd best time by 10 seconds. Here’s how my half-marathon races have gone:

• Oct 2009: 01:50:57
• May 2010: 01:44:12
• Sep 2010: 01:46:14
• May 2011: 02:32:31*
• May 2012: 01:46:23

*I was running to support someone else who was doing their first.

My split times show that my feeling yesterday was right: I pushed myself a bit too hard in the first half and flagged in the second. If I’d just kept my cool a bit more I might have done a lot better. These are the tactical differences between just finishing a race like this versus competing against yourself.

Against others I still did alright. I was at the 30th percentile of all finishers, the 42nd percentile of all males, and the 39th percentile of males in their forties.

It was a nice ceremony. About 60 people were granted their citizenship, presided over by the deputy mayor of the suburb. It was quick, taking only about 30 minutes in total. The guest speaker – a local clergyman – said hello in all the languages of the original nationalities represented, poked fun at how Australians speak, drew attention to the freedoms and responsibilities the citizens of this country enjoy, and pointed out that one in every four residents of Australia was not born in this country (a staggering statistic).

After they each received their certificates we sang “Advance Australia Fair”, and ate Lamingtons and Anzac biscuits. Our little gang went to the pub around the corner for some Toohey’s New and a pie. Proper.

I’ll be able to apply for Australian citizenship after I’ve been resident here for four years. That will be at the end of October 2013. I definitely will, to add to my growing collection (currently Canadian and British).

While the big coachloads of tourists all flock to Katoomba and Wentworth Falls gets lots of hikers, we like going out from Blackheath, just a bit further up the road. While the scenery might be slightly less large on that side of the mountains it’s still very dramatic, less developed, much less crowded, and more pristine. It’s better for getting away from it all, which is one of the main points of doing this.

Yesterday we did a new walk from Perry’s Lookdown to the Blue Gum Forest. A lookdown is like a lookout, I guess, but with such a dramatic drop that your eye is drawn downwards. And it’s a steep walk down, a rocky scramble of 656 m. Once down it’s a short stroll to the serene Blue Gum Forest. And you need that before the steep ascent back.

It’s a great spot to clear one’s head, push one’s body, and breathe deeply of the crisp autumn air.

View from Perry’s Lookdown to the valley floor and Blue Gum Forest below

Blue Gum Forest

Returning to the top, very tired, we’re greeted by a rainbow

Sydney centre for “wine, spirits & education” Oak Barrel is holding its inaugural Sydney Craft Beer & Cider Fair later this month. Looks good. They’ve got craft beer from Australia and around the world.

Yelp, the online review and event community that’s recently launched in Australia and that I contribute to, is one of the Fair’s sponsors. They recently hold a competition for Yelp users here to win a double pass to the Fair. The competition was to “tell us what you’d call your own personal craft beer or cider brand”.

I used my internet name in conjunction with my love of dark beers, sci-fi films, and bad puns to come up with Timinator Dark Lager: I’ll Be Bock.

And, lucky me, I won. To be fair only eight people entered; you can see the other entries here. But I’ll take it!

I’ll blog again after the event on May 26th. Assuming I can still type, that is.

This is what it was:

That’s an original watercolour painting of the cover of Pink Floyd’s classic album Dark Side of the Moon, a musical exploration of the themes of alienation and madness. Here’s what’s on the other side:

If you can’t read that, it says:

Dear fellow human

What is your ‘Dark side of the moon’? What is that which is without light in your life? What is that which you refuse to see, that you allow to bathe in the dark of the moon that is away from the sunlight.

Regards

A fellow human

I looked closely at the painting. It’s clearly an original. I looked at my neighbours’ mailboxes: none of them appeared to have anything in them.

How very interesting.

The literati may know this story from its original 18th-century French novel. Many people my age will know it from the mid-’80s film version. The younger may know the outline of the story as it was adapted in the 1999 film Cruel Intentions (though you lose the underlying theme of the moral degeneracy of pre-revolutionary French aristocrats).

This play was tops. It’s sexy, thrilling, funny, and labyrithine. The main actors dominate, though all are good. Hugo Weaving as Victome de Valmont gets to chew things up. He’s so good that by the end of the play I was so longer mentally inserting the words, “Mr. Anderson,” at the end of every sentence.

It’s showing at Wharf 1, which is not the biggest theatre, so you’re very close to the action. The costumes are just right: retro ’50s/’60s, enough to make you think of times past, but not stuffy period clothing. The way that they stage the duel scene is both imaginative and effective.

The play is still on until June 9th, though getting tickets will be hard. There are a couple of matinees with single seats, possibly.

I’ve still got to pick up a lot of speed on race day if I’m going to set a new half-marathon personal best. I think I’ll ramp up the sprints in the next few weeks.

I feel great.

I’m pleased about that run. I’ve still got 5 weeks until the half marathon (which is only 21.1 km), so I’ve got lots of time to improve my speed.

However, I will be two years older than I was at that time, and have not raced a half in a year. Even then I was running to support a first-timer; I haven’t raced a half at capacity for about 20 months. Nevertheless, I’m feeling good about my training right now, so I’m optimistic I’ll do okay.

They’re keeping the new one-lap course they used last year. Organisers are including staggered start times, though. Last year there was a serious bottleneck at the end of the Cahill Expressway, so I think that makes a lot of sense.

Spit to Manly walk. Photo from Gary Hayes via Creative Commons license.

Today saw me getting back to hiking, something I’ve not done for a couple of months. I did the Spit to Manly walk, one of the best-known ones around Sydney. It was a great hike, with the first third being up-and-down dirt trails through bush, the middle third being wide flat paths across the headland, and the last third skirting the residential areas around Manly. There are a few points we had to wade as the tide was in. There were good views, lots of other hikers, and some Aboriginal rock art along the way. Despite information claiming it should take between 3 and 4 hours, we knocked it off in just over 2. Must be my super-fitness.

Once in Manly we met some friends at 4 Pines, an excellent craft beer spot. I’d been wanting to try it for a while, and it’s  winner: good beer, good food, and a good location (if you get there early).