Endomondo Running Workout:
Last real hit out before the race, neatly but unintentionally in Canberra where I was supporting Liz in the dragonboat club championships. It's a long day hanging around a regatta even if you are paddling and since I wasn't I went for a run. I was only planning a 14 km training run, but I thought I'd keep going and ended up with just under 21 km. There's not a lot to say about this run; Lake Burley Griffin is not un-picturesque but large parts of its banks are just plain ugly and by starting off easterly I found the least elegant parts. Even when they finish the apartments that are currently building sites along Wentworth Avenue it isn't going to be much chop, judging by the blocks already built. It's not clear to me that the ACT planning office or the the relevant architects were operating with any particular aesthetic guidelines. Concrete functionalism - that's a bit out of date isn't it? About Fyshwick, of course, nothing too bad can be said. Australia's pornographic capital (Territories have no regulations covering pornography, plus for obscure reasons the diplomatic & parliamentary community seems to require extensive sex industry resources) has an ambiance to match. The wetlands are, or will be, a bonus, but they are still in the visible afterthought stage. Still, trying hard to be fair, all urban wetlands are afterthoughts, and for all that, running through Jerrabomberra - the afterthought - is much more pleasant than running through Fishwyk or Kingston - the forethought(s).
Lake Burley Griffin does support some wildlife not seen on the Cooks River, to wit, black swans; and the duck colonies around the area seem to be much larger than my local ones. That's nice; we saw the classic V-formations of flying ducks in the pre-sunrise dawn mist and it made a strangely evocative picture - I say "strange" because really, what is it evoking from my life experience? Images from paintings? Literary references? Nostalgia for a rural world that I have never been part of? It's very odd.
The last part of the run, the easterly loop from the so-called Reconciliation Place (where the racing had its finish line) is much more pleasant, being through tree-ed parkland as you head through the Parliamentary Zone around to Yarralumla. I did notice though that all the trees are "exotics", or weeds to the stern-minded. They don't handle the climate all that well; they have a ragged, unkempt appearance. The planting design seems very haphazard. Canberra is a place where the occasional piece is finely detailed, but all the places in between are unfinished.
Reconciliation Place: where the view stretches from the War Memorial to the Parliament, surrounded by invasive vegetation, an architectural and planning vision solely of Europe. Ho, Ho, Ho.
On a more cheerful note, this was a good run from the training point of view. Definitely my fastest half marathon with even the slowest kilometer being well under 6 minutes, and a couple of sub 5 minute kilometers chucked in for luck. And no question I could have kept going at that pace for while. The last 10 kilometers on race day still looms large, but I don't really think I could have done much more in training.
Fingers crossed.
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