5 Days and Counting

I'm coming down the home stretch for the half marathon on Sunday.  I've been staying true to my training goal of running as minimally as possible to see how the run goes.  It kind of feels like the first half marathon I did and the first marathon, for that fact.  But, all things considered, I'm feeling pretty good for the run.  I was planning on doing a nice easy week.  Eating right, staying away from the booze and trying to do everything as easy as possible before Sunday.

But, I knew that was going to be just a dream.  This is Australia, after all.  This past weekend hit me pretty hard.  I went to my first Rugby match and it was a game between the Australian national team (Wallabies) and the New Zealand national team (the All Blacks).  The game was out at the 2000 Olympic Stadium which was pretty cool.  Granted it was dark and we had already had a few, I wasn't able to see much.  But it's a quick 20 minute train ride to the stadium so I might have to head out and look around.

But on to the good part.  At the stadium, the concessions seem a little more lax than the states.  You can order 4 beers at a time, instead of the two you get at stadiums back home.  So, as soon as we got there we all separated.  And when we made it to the seats each of us had picked up the max.  For the five of us that went, we had more beers than room on the ground below us to store them.

For my first game, it was a good one.  The Wallabies had the lead for the first 75 minutes, only to lose the game in the last 5.  Pretty tough way to lose, but it was a good game.  One of the best parts was that there were no TV time outs.  The game that should take 100 minutes with halftime, took 100 minutes.  After watching a few live sporting events down here, I think I'd be OK seeing sponsors on teams jersey's if it meant fewer TV timeouts.

So that put me out of rhythm for the week leading up to the run, and it's just getting worse.  We're meeting with a few vendors this week which is going to take away a few of the nights I was planning to go to the gym to get geared up.  But that doesn't look like it's going to happen.  So, I guess my carb loading will consist of barley and hops.

Such is life.  If this is anything like 2006 you'll probably be able to find me sitting on my couch with a beer on Saturday night trying to get some sleep before the 6:20am start time (here's hoping I make it)...