fatvegan

I rode home in 15 minutes yesterday. It was pretty quick. Now my legs are sore and I have urges to eat potato.

The last few years I've spend a reasonable amount of money. Probably about $10 a week I reckon, which is quite a substantial proportion of my income. I used to try and work out how much money I would save if I rode to uni. I'd do the maths in my head while I waited for late buses. "I'll show Sydney Bues," I'd think to myself, "I'll get to uni quicker, get fit and save money. Damn you." I worked out how long I'd have to ride to pay of the cost of buying the bike in the first place. It was a long time, but in the long run it would be well worth it.

However, I hadn't considered all the costs of riding. Over the past few days I've realised that $1.11 (a bus ticket) worth of food isn't very much food. When you're riding for half an hour twice a day you get hungry. Or I'll get to uni and buy an orange juice for $2.50, completely eliminating any money savings I might have made.

So you win this round Sydney Buses, but just wait until I build my solar-powered scooter.

Jo and I are the latest victims of the obesity crisis. The City2Surf has sold out, due to an overwhelming surge in demand. I don't want to generalise but this demand, I suspect, is mostly driven by tubbers looking for motivation to exercise.

Dad, Stella, John and I all went for a bushwalk on the weekend. It was a real winner. We caught a train to the start and Jane picked us up at the end so it was super easy. The whole walk was virtually in our backyard, but it ended up being one of my favourite walks. Hornsby area has some pretty awesome bushland. And same way neat bridges.

John did the catering and it was brilliant.

Yesterday morning Jo was amazingly patient with me. We'd been planning to go for a run at Coogee at 9am. So when she woke me up at 10am I was already feeling a bit bad. I got dressed and made it out to the car. But then I decided I should come in and get my university work stuff so I could get dropped off on the way back. I was very speedy packing my bags, but a little too speedy running down the drive way. I tripped over the little gate lock hole in the middle of the driveway, sprained my ankle, did a funny roll across the footpath and wound up out on the road. I limped back to the house and Jo went off for a run by herself. I iced my ankle with frozen wedges. Which I later ate.

Google Maps tells you how to get from New York to Dublin via a vigorous swim across the Atlantic ocean. It even tells you which US wharf is the best to leave from. It estimates the whole journey should take about 29 days. I wonder if they've factored in time to take short rests during the swim. I get puffed swimming the whole length of an olympic pool, so I for one wouldn't be making the whole trip without a few breaks.

Yesterday I went for a run with Mil. It was a pretty good one. I went for another today. It was longer and hotter. I got to see some neat parts of Stanmore and Petersham.

They were my first runs for about three months.

Dad, Wayne, Neil, Simon and I went down Danae Brook Canyon on Monday 18th December. It was probably the toughest day of my life. I probably should have trained up a bit for it. Maybe 25 is the age where you really have to start doing that stuff.

We had to start at 6am (though we didn't start walking til 6:30am), so we were up at 5am. We camped the night at a sweet little spot that Wayne had found.

Finding the canyon was pretty easy. A cairn marked the point to leave the 4WD track and there was a track of sorts that was fairly easy to follow. We got to the first abseil at about 8:30am.

The first abseil was easy. Good anchor point. Quite long but you could probably climb down without a rope if you needed to. We were all pretty nervous so it was good to have something like that to start off with.

I was using a double-piton bar and we had a 9mm rope. Not a good combination. Only the longer free-fall drops my hand wasn't strong enough to control the descent. I did it for the first two abseils but my hand started to cramp so I shared dad's rack from that point on. Neil and Simon had figure-eights but I think the racks are the best.

The second abseil was long but straight forward too. Couple of slippery parts but nothing to tricky.

The third abseil was a bit tricky. Having stolen dad's rack I went down first. The book tells everyone but the last person to abseil on the outside of a large chockstone about half way down the drop. Getting onto (and over) the chockstone is tricky and there is the possibility that the rope will jam. If it jammed it would make it hard for the next people to come down. And the last person would have to unjam it and go down the inside anyway. So I decided to go down the inside of the chockstone. Unfortunately the rope went on the outside and I got jammed. I spent a fairly hairy 10 minutes hanging 15 metres above the ground trying to unjam the rope so I could keep going down. I was a couple of metres below the chockstone and didn't have prussick loops so I couldn't climb back onto the chockstone to unjam the rope. The other guys couldn't see me but I yelled out for them to set up the backup rope. Eventually - just as Wayne was coming down the next rope - I was able to flick one of the strands out of the crevice. I used it to pull the other strand out of the jam. I'd tied off my belay device so I was secured and that had freaked me out a bit. But untying it was worse. I was worried after I'd undone the knots I'd be left holding onto the wrong piece of rope. Luckily I was able to wedge myself against by walls of the tunnel I was in so I didn't have weight on the rope anyway. After that it was all good. We all came down pretty easily.

We had a bit of a scare when the rope jammed while we were pulling it down. But we all jumped on it at the same time and it came tumbling down with us.

The fourth abseil was a winner. Free fall through the middle of a waterfall for 30 metres.

There were a few more abseils which we were expecting to be tricky. But none of them were particularly tricky. In fact they were some of the easier abseils I've done, apart from the height. Which was high.

There was, however, an extremely tricky walk once we'd finished the abseils. We had to clamber down through some recent-looking rock-falls for about an hour, and it was hard work. The first part of it was pretty dangerous too. Much more dangerous than any of the abseils we'd had to do. Then there was a nice stroll for another hour through the river-bed. Although by that point we were starting to worry about light, and our legs were starting to die, so it wasn't as pleasant as it might have been.

It was only when we got to the bottom of the creek that the hard work really started. We had two hours of light and a surly 600m slope to climb. Normally 600m wouldn't fuss me that much, but we were already knackered and we had to carry water up in case we had to camp the night on the track. So it was an extremely tough hour and a half up this hill. Our legs started to cramp up. My achilles started to hurt. For the second time in 15 years I started to feeling asthma coming on.

I think it was the asthma that really got to me actually. I remembered my last (and only serious) attack at the beginning of the year on a walk with Libby. That walk was a total cruise the attack left me lying in the middle of the track for an hour or so until I recovered. We didn't really have the luxury of stopping on Danae and I was freaking out that I'd spend the night sleeping where I dropped.

Eventually, and it seemed rather magically, we arrived at the top and popped out onto the main walking track without a fuss. From there on we simply had to stuff our faces with nuts and jelly beans and chocolate to make ourselves keep walking. Leg cramps made certain movements almost in possible, so much of my rock-climbing was really creative falling mixed in with some odd sorts of levering.

When we got to the end we were pretty tired. It was 9:30pm, about 30 minutes after dark. The day had been about 15 hours of fairly solid activity. We went back to the camp site and had a beer. I'd been craving it all day, but I was too tired and hungry to really enjoy it. We were too tired to cook anything, and we knew all the restaurants were closed. So we ate whatever chips and biscuits we could find left over. It didn't really help.

It was still a long drive home, which I only drove a tiny portion of. We ended up getting into bed at about 2pm. Youngy had to drive back to the Central Coast, poor bugger. It was a long day. And a good sleep.

So much running tonight. It was a semi-final at frisbee. I still suck, but the team I'm in is on top of the table apparently. The other guys were really fast. My legs hurt. And I'm puffed. And thirsty. And cold too. Oh yes. And a bit sick. My snot is the same colour as Hannah's, so I blame her.

My calfs are pretty sore. Actually, very sore. And my knees ache. And I want to spend all day in bed. But I have to go to uni, and then play frisbee tonight. For once I'm not really looking forward to frisbee. I can hardly even walk.

I'm about to start training for the City 2 Surf. It's exciting. I'm starting training now because I think it's good to slowly work your way up to full training, when you're preparing for a big event. You need to leave yourself plenty of time to get into shape. It's going to be fun.

I bought some special shoes with spikes in them today. For frisbee and touch footy eh. They were up for cheaps at the sports shop, and the lass reckoned they were made just for touch footy. Good for pivoting on or something. Anyway, I played with them this arvo. Bloody awesome. They make a huge difference for the first five minutes. You run heaps fast fair dinkum. But then you're so buggered from running around so much, that they don't really make much difference. Those first five minutes but, they're great.

Dad and I played touch football tonight. We lost 6-2. But it was tops fun. I liked it a lot. I think I only dropped the ball once. And probably only let through a couple of tries. It was a good night. Tomorrow is frisbee training. We have a proper coach now apparently.

40 laps. 110 minutes. Last lap - 56 seconds. Athens here we come.

The world record for the most severely handicapped paralympic swimmers (missing limbs and the like) is 69 seconds. So I reckon I'm doing pretty good.

I did 30 laps at the pool today. It took an hour. Then stupid Libby came and did 15 laps in like two minutes or something. But still, 30 laps is pretty bloody good. It's my best ever. It was raining so by the time we were leaving there was no one in the pool. So for the first time I snuck over in the FAST-PACE LANE and did my 30th lap in that. I had the whole lane to myself and just blasted down the middle without even looking out for anyone else. It was terrific. I'm convinced it made me a lot faster.

Robyn and I had a swimming race, and she won. But only just. Although I had a head start. But she had flippers. Although she wasn't using her hands. Just a kickboard. That's a nice word. Like "compote". I'll add them to my word list.

I've just developed a new sports theory. It's my first ever theory specifically related to sport, so it's quite an event.

My theory is as follows.

Sports participants playing barefoot will run more, because the sensation of wet muddy grass squishing between their toes is so pleasant.

That is my theory. And it is mine.

My ultimate frisbee muscles are so sore. I can hardly walk. But it's so good. I love that post-exercise feeling.

On nights before early morning swims I need to remember to go to bed earlier.

We went swimming again this morning. I got my first-ever underwater cramp, in both my leg and my stomach at once. And I did 5 full laps (and 8 more broken laps) of the pool. My last best was 3 whole laps. I think I probably also broke my PB for the most laps done one third at a time.

I don't really enjoy swimming. But I'm trying.