Mar 24 - Run For The Kids

  My mobile went off at the ungodly hour of 6:00am.  I rolled over and got out of bed and headed to the shower.  I clunked around grabbing clothes out of the wardrobe, I got dressed, I ate breakfast, got my bag together.  Through all of this Mr Smart did not stir a wink.  He later claimed that what woke him was the teensiest whisper from me of "Bye, be back soon" as I headed out the door at 6:30am.
  I drove in to work and collected my Team Layla t-shirt from my desk, put it on and caught a tram down to The Queen Victoria Garden's Floral Clock on the corner of Linlithgow Avenue and St Kilda Road.  Here the team congregated before heading to their assigned zones for the event start.

  There were 35,000 participants in this year's Run for the Kids; Team Layla is one of the biggest teams at around 50 people.  Sensibly, they stagger the start times from 8am but you still have to go to your zone at that time.  There are green, purple and white zones for the short course of 5.5km.  Green and purple zone people generally run or partially run the course, whereas white zone slow-coaches like me walk it.  The blue, yellow, orange and red zones are for the insane people who like to run the long course of 15km which includes jaunts through the Domain Tunnel and over the Bolte Bridge.

  It was a great morning for it, cool to begin with but clear skies.  I made it to the Start line at 8:33am and off I went.  All of my work colleagues forming part of Team Layla today were doing the run so I was on my own.  This was not an altogether bad thing as I tend to find walking easier when I'm not also trying to carry on a conversation.
  The walk took me across the Swan St Bridge and up the Exhibition Street extension to Flinders Street, then up St Kilda Road to Birdwood Avenue, up Birdwood a ways and then u-turn back to the finish line at 9:44am.
  I won't know for a while what my official recorded time is but it will be pretty close to my estimate.  It's about 4.6kmph which I'm pretty happy with over that distance.

 Just beyond the finish line they have an electronic tag retrieval station, basically a kid with scissors that cuts your electronic shoe tag off.  They issue every participant with an electronic tag when they register to collect everyone's official times.  They are activated and deactivated by walking over electronic grids at the Start and Finish lines.  It's quite a clever way to do it en masse.
  As soon as my shoe tag was handed in I walked straight to the tram line and onto a tram back to my car.  I didn't want to keep Mr Smart waiting.  I made it home with sore feet and stiffened thigh muscles and wondered aloud if Mr Smart was hungry.  I certainly was.  We decided to head to Arena at The Glen for breakfast, or in my case - second breakfast.
  The Glen has a local sparrow population and they are very cute, sitting on the backs of chairs while people eat, scoping out crumbs and other such likely morsels.  I know from working in shopping centre management myself what a bane they are to property managers but I'll to personally thinking they are adorable.  One of the other diners had tossed a small chunk of toast onto the chair opposite her and a likely feathered fellow swooped in to collect it.  Mr Smart smiled with amusement and momentarily eyed off my leftover toast, but he restrained himself.
  Once we'd finished our late morning breakfast, Mr Smart collected up his things and headed home to continue his day's study and I was left to begin the mountain of chores left undone due to my bout of vertigo (and also my extreme reluctance to do housework).  I put on a load of laundry and sat down at my computer to check my email while the washing machine ran.  As soon as I logged in to facebook I realised I had something else on today too!
  I hung out the laundry, grabbed a few things and headed down to Bertie's for her Tupperware party.  It was a relatively small gathering, six people, one of whom was my ex-sister-in-law (whom I was happy enough to see and catch up with).  The Tupperware consultant was friendly and not pushy, I got a little prize for demonstration of product knowledge as did most of the others, and she made two dips for us to try using the Tupperware products.  True, both could have been made without the Tupperware, but it was a nice demonstration nevertheless, and tasty too!
  I didn't get too much, in the end I spent $67.  A ridiculous amount of money for four small snack tubs and a pair of kitchen scissors, but I didn't buy anything I didn't need (thank you Mr Smart for being my acting financial conscience in that regard).  But I did learn a new use for one of my existing Tupperware containers which was good.  I headed home not long after the demonstration, once my nephew had finally agreed to give me my goodbye kisses and cuddles, four year olds can be very difficult creatures it seems.

  Today's food and exercise were:

• Breakfast was a quarter cup of Carmen's Classic fruit and nut muesli with Paul's Smarter White milk.
• Second breakfast was the Arena big vegetarian breakfast.  Two poached eggs, mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, hash browns and dark rye toast with fresh-squeezed orange juice and a cappucino (with no sugar!).  I only ate half the toast and half the spinach.
• For afternoon snack / remainder of the day, I had Toblerone dip with marshmallows, raspberries and strawberries followed by freshly made tomato, feta and basil dip with wafer crackers, nacho cheese Doritos and some marinated feta and Yumi's sweet potato and cashew dip that appeared post-photo.

  Once I got home I started writing the blog, did a spot of proof-reading for Mr Smart and a spot of logical analysis for Earnest but that was about all else for the day and I am definitely ready to hit the hay now.  Work is going to be super busy tomorrow I expect, but hopefully I'll be able to deal with the challenges despite the two days I missed last week.
  Jess