Doggy Biggest Loser

Toby has a little problem.

It's a pretty common problem for dogs of his breed and similar breeds. But it's a problem that needs to be addressed for him to live a long and healthy life.

Toby loves food! He's an unashamed binger and will eat almost anything. Broccoli, beans, mouldy bread - if he can find it he will eat it. 

And it's starting to show. I've noticed a definite wiggle in his walk lately. Actually it's more like a waddle where his belly is swaying from side to side as he makes his way from couch to food bowl and back again. Oh, yes - he's a couch potato that has a nice turn of speed when he hears someone rummaging in the pantry. And he's my constant companion once I put my baking apron on.

I tried to convince myself that it was just his winter coat but not even I can ignore that waddle. So I'm going to have to harden up and start to ignore those pleading eyes.

We decided as a family that we were going to reduce his dog food and the number of leftovers that he's offered. And this has resulted in more leftovers going into the compost which in turn goes into the hen. I can live with a fat hen but not a fat dog.

But this has not gone unnoticed by our astute and cunning canine. Unbeknownst to me, he's been making forays into the chook run to help himself to what he thinks is rightfully his. And here I was thinking that his new diet wasn't working. 

The other day I went outside to see why our hen was a little upset and there was Toby. He wasn't interested in her - only her food - and she was indignant that she had to share all those luscious morsels of dinners past.

So Iven has had to do a little work on the fence. This is the doggy version of a padlock on the fridge. 

He can't get a toe-hold on the wire any more. Humans 1 - Toby 0

I'm pretty sure that his reduced food intake and his nightly walks will have him back to normal in no time. 

And for those of you wondering why I don't just take him running with me (which was one of my plans when I bought him). He is just like his human brothers when they were younger. No amount of cajoling or bribery could get them to see running as a fun exercise. They'd come for a couple of times around cross-country and then they'd find some excuse why they couldn't. Toby likes the IDEA of a run but isn't in love with any distance over 500m. He slows down. He sits. He's even been known to lie down and refuse to move. It takes me back to having a two year old - without the full blown heel-stomping, red-faced tantrum.

Any ideas in how to make my boy into a lean, mean running machine?

Career Sea Change

I am thinking of changing professions.

It won't be the first time in my life. I've had a couple of jobs and some of them have even been paid me. I earned a bit of money while I was at uni by ironing and cleaning house - yeah, that was a lot of fun and probably the reason why I still cringe when I plug in the iron. Then I did a two week stint on a chicken farm where I learnt to crack eggs in both hands at the same time without getting shell into the egg pulp. That's a life skill worth having.

I worked as a vet for a little while after I graduated until it became just too hard with kids and then I became domestic goddess/slave/business owner. That's been my longest-running role.

But this weekend opened my eyes to other possibilities.

I went to a Hens party on Saturday. As I've mentioned a couple of times, my running friend Bec is getting married. The Bucks were all heading out on a magical mystery tour which involved physical and emotional challenges, confronting fears and challenging livers. It also involved humiliating the groom just a little by making him dress like this all day.

Yes, that's one of my creations. I like to think there's some understated elegance there. Tom doesn't look entirely convinced, though. And if there's enough interest I might just start a line of leotards just for classy Bucks' functions.

Bec, the bride-to-be, was treated with a lot more dignity.  

The girls decided that we'd be cultured and have an afternoon filled with art and music and arranged an art teacher to come and give us drawing lessons - life drawing. Yep, that means a nude model. Or, more precisely, an almost nude model. He kept it classy by wearing a bow tie.

I was expecting to feel a little confronted by the whole thing but it was surprising - when you're focused on what you're doing it doesn't seem at all weird to be staring at a strange naked man.

So my new career? Artist of course!

How could you think otherwise after seeing these beauties?? My latent talent is obvious. It might need a little honing but when I get a passion for something I can be unstoppable. 

The first two sketches were done using a single line and not really being able to look down at what you were doing. The bottom two were done using the techniques shown to us by the teacher. We only had five minutes to do them in which explains the lack of detail. The model was quite concerned that I'd left out a bit of him - I'm pretty sure that there was more than one bit that I missed out on but not being a male, couldn't decide which he thought was more vital. 

After the drawing class it was off to dinner and I found out that if I was ever taken to Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of terrorism and was tortured by having loud music played into my cell I'd probably last only about fifteen minutes before giving up a life-time's worth of secrets. I'd be telling them my passwords, pin numbers and the location of my secret stash of peanut M&Ms as well as handing over all three of my sons into slavery.

So terrorism's definitely off my list of possible new careers. But fine art's a definite possibility. What do you think?

It's All Done With Smoke And Mirrors And Industrial-Strength Underwear

I'm feeling strangely uplifted today.

Could be that the new bra I bought this week has special anti-gravity properties. Man, I love physics - and I love how physics can be used to counteract its basic laws. A few bits of elastic, appropriately moulded foam, some pretty lace and lycra and some industrial-strength wire can wipe away the effects of three hungry babies and 50 years of gravity.

Actually I'm thinking that I should lengthen the bra straps just a little - my mammaries aren't used to the altitude and I don't want them suffering from lack of oxygen. So maybe I should acclimatise them by extending the straps way out then tightening them a little every couple of days. Doesn't altitude training result in the production of extra red blood cells to help minimise the effects of the lower oxygen concentration? So wearing a more uplifting bra should eventually result in me being a better endurance athlete. And a perkier one.

So you can probably guess from the new bra that I did finally manage to go underwear shopping this week. Sans sons. And a whole new world was opened up to me. Who knew that there was underwear that really negates the need to ever exercise again? That would probably be every woman in the developed world except me. 

I thought that it was only by hard work and privation (or being one of the genetically blessed minority) that women were able to look good in clothes. Not so. Apparently you can manage to slim off kilos just by squeezing yourself into a modern-day corset.

Spend a good twenty minutes wrestling this thing on and not only will months of substance abuse (my substance of choice is peanut m&ms) be forgiven but the glute-deficient amongst us can instantly blend into a crowd - no longer to be mocked by their more well-endowed sisters (who can probably twerk). If only they'd had these years ago when I spent most of my weekends sitting on concrete watching the boys play football. I would never have had to bemoan my lack of god-given padding or the fact that I'd forgotten to bring a cushion again.

See Coach Chris - there's really no reason to run hills. Apart from developing strength and stamina. Why go to all the trouble when you can give the illusion that you run hills and do squats in your spare time?!

I can't help but feel that it's all a bit of a con job. And that there must be some mightily disappointed men out there who go to 'unwrap their present' only to find that it's not what they were expecting.

But regardless of my moral misgivings I will be wearing said garment of medieval torture. The French said it best - 'Il faut souffrir pour etre belle.' One must suffer to be beautiful.

My Brush With Celebrity

Occasionally in life you get a chance to rub shoulders with greatness. It's happened to me a few times in my fifty years. I've sweat next to the wife of a local newsreader at my gym. I got to discuss the virtues of netting vs tulle for a fairy skirt with a children's TV presenter. I've sat next to the captain of our local NRL team at a soccer match (I'm certain it was Sam Thaiday - well, pretty sure). And I sat directly behind the winner of Australian Idol, Stan Walker, in a Virgin lounge in Sydney.

But today I'd like to boast about my brush with Australia's newest football star. Man of the match from last night's World Cup Qualifier, Robbie Kruse.

Nine years ago Robbie was a skinny little kid playing with my eldest Sam at Brisbane Toro. He was two years younger than most of the kids on the team but his talent was obvious. He was too small to ever play a full match - the bigger boys on opposing teams saw him as an easy target and he was often pushed around and over. But he was a tenacious player with fantastic skills and he just never quit.

At the breakup at the end of the season I was standing chatting with another mum when we saw Robbie head down the hallway to the toilet. He didn't shut the door and we were given a pretty good view of proceedings and it was then that I said to Anda (the mum next to me) that one day, when he was a famous Socceroo, we'd be able to say that we'd seen him pee.

So there you have it - I've seen a now-famous Socceroo pee. 

And that's the closest, most intimate, brush with celebrity that I'll probably ever have because being presented with a gold medal by Hugh Jackman in my imagination doesn't really count. Unfortunately.

Has anyone else had a strange or interesting encounter with a celebrity?

Running Towards a Goal

It's a public holiday today. And it's raining.

Luckily, though, I got my Monday morning run done on Sunday afternoon. Rebel without a cause! Actually, that's not entirely true - I did have a cause and it was to be able to sleep in on the public holiday. And, as it turns out, not run in the rain. That was lucky.

Being able to change the time I run is one of the reasons I love winter. In summer if you're not on the road by 5:30 am there's no point in running. Believe me, I've tried it and even quite late afternoon it's way too hot and if I run once it's dark there are other issues - like who's going to cook dinner, what time will we finally get to eat and will I ever be able to get to sleep?

Yesterday I was running by 3:30pm. Actually that's not entirely true either. I was walking up the hill to the top road where I started running. So I was probably running by 3:37pm.

Running in the afternoon is quite a different ballgame to running in the morning. It's warm enough to be able to wear singlet and shorts rather than capris and a short sleeve shirt. I can actually see where I'm going. And there's a lot more people and cars to avoid. That means a little more waiting at lights but when you've been running pretty hard that's not actually a bad thing.

I'm also a bit less stiff once it comes to the afternoon so it doesn't take me so long to get into a rhythm. And that's good because I've been trying to treat my Monday (or Sunday) run as a tempo run so my body can start to get used to running out of my comfort zone.

When I wasn't well it was all about just doing what I could when it came to running. There was pretty much nothing when it came to making goals - apart from just being able to run when I could. I would try to get three runs done a week at the minimum but sometimes that didn't happen. And running fast was totally beyond me unless it was a quick few metres to get out of the way of a car. Being able to run structured training sessions now is great, wonderful, amazing but it's also challenging to a mind that's had only one focus over the last year or so - to keep the running as easy as possible.

So yesterday's run was three kilometres at an easy pace then I ramped it up over the next couple of k till I was running sub 5 min k's and my aim was to do as many of those as I could before I got home or died - whichever came first.

I learnt three interesting things yesterday.

If I stop frowning and consciously relax my face running fast seems a little easier. I don't know if there's a flow-on effect to the rest of my body but it definitely feels like there is.

My intestines will react negatively if I try to run fast for more than two kilometres. But a toilet stop will give me just enough of a breather to send me on my way with renewed vigour.

A hill in the middle of my tempo section will make me very anal about not breaking the law. There's a set of lights at the top of the hill and I'll usually run across that road despite what colour the little man is. Yesterday I refused to move until that little red man turned green as every law-abiding citizen should do.

Seven kilometres out of twelve done at sub-five minute pace. Happy with that. Although I'd be happier if I didn't feel the need to be quite so law-abiding. My next race is the 10k at the Gold Coast the first weekend in July and I'd really like to run under 50 mins. I'm pretty sure they don't allow me to stop my watch to duck off to the loo or to wait for traffic lights to change so I'm going to have to harden up a little and learn to love the pain.

Vindication and Shopping For Undies

Winner, winner chicken dinner.

It turned out not to be too hard to get the results corrected from Sunday's race. And it turned out that I wasn't the only one to have issues with the timing. Someone commented after that post that they'd known of seven runners at the event and out of them, six had incorrect results. How does this happen with computerised race timing? 

And for those wondering about net time vs gun time - there was only gun time at this race. The directors only pay for the cheapest timing package which doesn't include start mats. But the results were so poor I couldn't help but wonder if it might have been better to do it old-school. With a multi-timer and place tickets just like we used to do it at Little Athletics.

But on to more important real-world issues.

I'm going to be a bridesmaid in a couple of weeks. The 'maid' part of the title seems a little like false-advertising. Like I'm still young, innocent and perky. It would probably be more correct to be bride-matron or bride- been-there-done-that-got-three-sons-to-prove-it. 

But regardless I'm excited about the upcoming nuptials. It will be lovely to see Bec and Tom tie the knot. And to have a weekend away from my kids and husband. And to get dressed up.

Did you believe that? I'm really (and that's not sarcastic at all) excited about getting all prettied up. Me! Who hates shopping and make up and fancy shoes!! But this time I haven't had to make any of the decisions. The dress was scouted out by the bridesmaid who likes shopping and all I had to do was try it on. 

Admittedly there was a previous attempt at dress shopping before we hit gold. And it was on that occasion that I proved just how bad I was at the whole thing by being incapable of getting dressed without help. But it was hard to tell which was the front and which was the back. And that second dress at that tricky insert that was supposed to contain me not just flap down behind. 

Dresses should not require a degree to be able to put them on. 

The final dress, however is pretty idiot proof. Thank goodness. Because I am patently not gifted in this area.

But dressing up does not merely stop at the dress. There are shoes and wraps and accessories and underwear that also need to be sourced. And because the wedding is in just over two weeks I decided this week to tick a couple off the list. 

The shoes weren't too bad. Except that we needed to look for flat, sparkly sandals and it's winter so it's easier to get boots than sandals. I did manage to find a lovely pair with the help of a very long-suffering sales assistant that knew me on sight by the third time I'd been to her store. She liked me enough to let me strip off out the back and put the dress on so I could get a better idea of how it would look without jeans. 

The underwear was next on the list. I'd stupidly thought I'd actually try and lose a little bit of weight to get a flatter tummy to wear under this fairly figure-hugging dress. And I DID try for a day. And then there were left-over lollies from my cake that had to be eaten before they went mouldy. (Lollies go mouldy don't they?) And it would be irresponsible of me to serve up a cake without tasting the batter to make sure it tasted okay. 

So while it might have been good in theory, the reality is that I will being using artificial means of giving the illusion of a flat stomach. So after buying the shoes I headed off to a department store in search of industrial strength lycra. The only problem was that I had my eldest in tow. And despite him being one of the causes of my problem, he really was very against being part of the cure.

Who'd have thought 25 year old sons would hate to shop for underwear with their mothers?? I've shopped for his underwear for years and yet he gets all thingy about standing in the lingerie department with me.

Needless to say the underwear shopping was brief. (And no I'm not sorry for the bad pun.) I decided I'd try again the next day. But the next day came and I had both my eldest and youngest in tow and nineteen year olds are even more funny about standing in the lingerie department with their mothers.

I will try again next week. Without any of my progeny. Wish me luck!

CSI Bris-vegas

I swear those super-sleuths on TV have nothing on a runner who believes she ran better than the results on the internet suggest.

The provisional results for Sunday's race were on line by Sunday night and I'd been curious all day about the lady in pink that I'd passed in the home stretch. I'd thought that she might be in my age group  but I'm a terrible judge of age and the lady who'd collected the third place medal wasn't her so it was up to the results to satisfy my curiosity.

So I was surprised when I saw this - I'm seventh name down and the two people following close behind are definitely male. Plus the time I'd gotten on my watch was 5 seconds out. Sure I might not have pressed start the moment that they'd said go (it was a really low-key event - no starting pistol or hooter) but I certainly don't have a tortoise-like reaction. I'm more ninja-on-red-bull especially when I'm trying to drag off a P-plater apprentice tradie in a ute at a set of red lights.

So who was the lady in pink that I'd passed? Was she just a figment of my oxygen-deprived brain that I'd conjured up to keep me pushing the pace right to the end?

I knew I was going to have to wait till the photos came through to see if I was just making up porkies, if I was hallucinating and maybe needed (more) medicating and a white jacket OR if something had gone amiss with the timing and the results.

Photos came through yesterday evening and I'm relieved to know that I'm not seeing little pink people. Somehow the results got a little stuffed up - not sure how when it's all done with the magic of chips and computers.

It took quite a bit of searching to find the incriminating photos. The photographer had done a really good job of getting shots which hadn't been photo-bombed by hoards of gurning runners. (Gurning is a quaint English tradition where you win by being voted the most grotesque-looking. It's like a reverse beauty pageant.)

But persistence is my middle name. Or it might be OCD. Or she-who-must-be-right. I eventually found what I was looking for.

Here's me finishing in front of the lady in white from the half marathon and if you look closely you can see a little sliver of pink just poking out from the side of the finish arch.

And here's the same white lady being followed through the finish line by my pink hallucination-who-was-actually-real. I checked her number against the results and 'apparently' she finished 5 seconds ahead of me and won the 50-59 age group. 

So I'm claiming my rightful victory here and now. I might not have the medal but in my head I'm standing on the top of the podium with the olive wreath around my head and the gold medal being placed around by neck by none other than Hugh Jackman (Yep, I enjoyed that congratulatory kiss, Hugh. Hope you did too.) while the stadium full of adoring fans erupts with cheers making it impossible to hear the Chariots of Fire theme being played over the loud-speakers.

Pity reality isn't as much fun as my imagination!