Born Free....

Today the wombat ran naked and oh! what a feeling.... No not naked as in no clothes, I mean that would be silly .The West Australian sun would just cook me... No I ran without my Garmin. I took my watch the youngest of my wombats purchased me 2 birthdays ago and set out the door. I could faintly hear the foot pod , which was still attached to my shoe, screaming as it tried to locate it's wristed partner in vain but I did not care. The watch with the faded red (now pink) wrist band and ability to simply tell me the date, time and then start and stop but no memorise it was bravely digitally away. Normally relegated to working in the yard while I do cementing or clean the pool it was actually getting to leave the burrow and head out for a run.



Today I felt free and I was born free, well I actually think my parents were charged a small fee at the hospital but other than that I was free. No chimes, no mile reference beeps or time calibration chirps. Just me and my simple watch and favourite pair of Kayanos moving through the bush. Today I actually floated. Felt fantastic . In fact it was on eof those runs where you just seem to move along. Having run this course a number of times, many in fact, I knew pretty much how far it was. (The Garmin had indicated previously that it was 8.11miles which is not bad as I had estimated it as 8 miles using my tried and true method of simply saying I cover each mile in 7 minutes, this is a very rough calculator but surprisingly very good. If I do in reality run further then that's money in the bank, if it turns out that the run is shorter then I guess I can draw on the money in the bank. either way it works out)....



My pace was good this morning and I was determined not to let the pace slip so I just worked it and bugga me I felt good. yeah I know it was only 5 miles (8km roughly) but for a fat little wombat on a journey of rediscovery it felt good... The open section of bitumen that I had to run along to get to kangaroo rise was a tad hot but the gradual down hill helped this and then climbing the exposed gravel rise that tends to be a little exposed was made easier by the fact that a mob of roos were feeding on the dry, crusty barren grass... The final pinch of Beacon to Molloy hurt, it always does when your not fit , but I just felt quick today .


At I crossed my make believe finish line between the letter box and the road sign (cant stop running until I cross this line, comes from habit " Run through the line my coach would always say") I look down at my faded red pink wrist banded watch which has gamely been holding time since I headed out 35 minutes ago is still recording time. I press the the stop button and glance to notice 35minutes 36.34sec, at the same time I must have pressed the reset button. Shit , gone , time lost.... Ahh no worries I remembered it, not that old yet... Tomorrow I may go back to the safety of the 2456789 memory watch which can tell me how many steps I have taken , plot my course on google earth and communicate with extra terrestrial life at least then I wont have to try and work out how to get this bloody foot pod off my shoe...


Barrel on wombats...

Footnote: Freaking thing my blog dashboard now has an add for the Garmin Forerunner 405.. Has google earth tracked me or is the watch trying to gang up on me to upgrade... Conspiracy theorists would love that on