My first run with Bumi, the dog that never pants

I think I've found my new favourite running partner!

His name is Bumi, and he's a friend's very athletic pup. Barely a year old, he has the sweetest disposition and strangest pooping habits (I think he's afraid to go in public...which makes things difficult to say the least). He kept up with me very well, and when he realized how much fun this whole jogging thing is, he basically insisted that we keep going.

Our stats weren't spectacular, but I'm hoping we can drum up some spectacular next week. If my friend doesn't mind (and I'm pretty sure she doesn't), I would love to run with Bumi every week! New running partner + new running parks = awesome sauce!

In other news, I think I've gotten discovered a limit to my sociability. For example, Steven and his friends went to catch up over bubble tea and I opted out. My excuse? I spent all day chatting and gabbing at work, at dinner, and dessert. All I wanted to do was clean the kitchen (ooohhhh yeah feels so good when it's sparkling!) and watch TV. Or, I'm just antisocial and OCD about my kitchen.

Is it weird that I like cleaning so much?

New work clothes

I am so lucky to live in a place where I can run along this little river every morning if I choose: 

I had a text talk today with a friend that just recently adopted a dog. He's a huge mixed breed with the longest legs ever. I've already got a run date with him possibly probably for Saturday. I can't wait! It's going to be a dog-love-sweat fest. :)

I'm totally not being negligent about my own dog though. I'm still chasing her around parks and fields, and bringing her home tired. See?

Can't even lift her head....

In other news, I recently started a new reception/office management job that I'm really excited about. Of course, a new job always means new work attire:

From Dynamite.

And cheap 2 for $20 flats at Ardenes.

Somehow, dressing well for work makes work so much more enjoyable. Agree, disagree?

There's a deer in there!

Coming back to Toronto from nearly a year spent abroad, the jet lag has hit me hard this week. I've been waking up constantly at 4AM, wide awake, unable to fall back asleep.

Luckily, exercise is supposed to help with jet lag, so I went for a run this morning.

I didn't bring this little girl, though. It was still dark outside when I left, and she showed no interest leaving her warm bed.

I'm glad I didn't end up bringing her because I saw two deer on my run (she would've scared them away)! 

It doesn't look like it, but I swear there are deer in these pictures!!!

This one was a young male. I could see the beginning of antlers.

This was a female deer. She's quite deep among the trees, but she's there!

My stats: 

A Tsurumi River Run

Living outside of Tokyo for these few days have been a breath of fresh air (literally) compared to the hustle and bustle of Tokyo.

For the past few days, Steven and I have been meeting friends and touring around Tokyo - Shibuya, Harajuku, Asakusa, etc. It's a lot of effort, fighting HORDES of people through subway and train stations, streets, markets, etc. By the end of the day, we are always exhausted.

This morning, we decided to have a glorious sleep in, as our only plan was to hit up Studio Ghibli later in the day (I'M SO EXCITED I CANNOT WAIIITT!!).

I got out of the house around 9:30 AM for a really hot, sweaty run by the neighbourhood river. As I had no idea where I was going, I had to count the number of bridges I passed so that I knew which bridge took me home when I turned around.

By the end of it, I was drenched in sweat and hotter than a furnace! Even 10:00 AM in early September is seriously hot in Tokyo! I'm actually looking forward to having a cool fall when we return to Toronto.

My stats:
2.30 miles
33 minutes
9.03 mins / km

A Rainy Run in Kyoto

OHAYO GOZAIMASU KYOTO!

I love this place. It's full of shrines, temples, history, alleyways, shops, hidden cafes, restaurants, and so, so much more that I don't even have words GAH!

We only had a small taste of the culture and history here yesterday, which will continue in force today despite the rain.

I started today with a run, with the ultimate goal to explore the Kyoto Botanical Gardens. I haven't run in about a month.

I didn't even get close to the Botanical Gardens. :)

I was huffing and puffing by the time I made it to the first major intersection, and by the time I got to Kamo River, I was soaked by the rain, and blisters were already forming on my toes. I'm a horrible excuse for a runner.

However, I got to run along this for a while:

It's even more beautiful in real life. I think I'm in love.

My stats:
2.13 miles
33 minutes
9.37 km/min pace

A Kangaroo-filled Run

Last week, Steven and I traveled to the heart of the Australian Outback: Uluru, The Olgas and King's Canyon (If you have no idea what these places are, think big red rocks and scrubby desert...and emus).

Our start off point was Alice Springs, a small town of around 20,000 people. The town exists basically to feed and house the tourist traffic that eventually trickles down to the big attractions of Uluru and King's Canyon about 4-6 hours down the highway.

As our B'nB hosts explained, Alice Springs is an overlooked attraction in and of itself! It's flanked by the MacDonnell Ranges, valleys and wildlife, and even pockets of rainforest in the middle of the outback. There are plenty of trails and walks around Alice Springs.

Our host recommended a short loop around the Telegraph Station park lands, which is both historic and incredibly Australian. The Telegraph Station is quite significant, as before it was constructed, the only way to communicate between Darwin up to the north and the rest of Australia down in the south was by messenger. HUMAN messenger! It would take weeks! The telegraph stations made communication happen within a day. However, the telegraph signal would die out over a couple hundred kilometers, so there are these historic telegraph stations basically spanning the entire outback.

Can you imagine being posted to a telegraph station in outback Australia? Desolate, isolated, oh, and kangaroo-filled!

I saw sooo many kangaroos on this run.

However, I felt like such a blundering monster through these beautiful, quiet morning trails, sliding up and down the rocky paths with my heavy footfalls, my liter of water sloshing around in my bottle, my heavy panting, etc. etc. I know I scared away so many more kangaroos than I saw because I saw one hopping away on the rocks with her joey in her mouth.

My stats:

Oh, and those "rivers" on the map above are actually all dry. They only fill up with sufficient rainfall, which may happen in 3 months, or 3 years. The desert is an amazing place!

More Last Things in Sydney

These last days at work, I've been busy training my replacement(s) to do my job and wrapping projects up with the practitioners in clinic. Surprisingly, I didn't have to work past regular hours any time yet this week (fingers crossed!). Today, I even got off early.

Since I didn't have time for my usual Wednesday trail run, I made the most of my early afternoon to pay one last visit to our neighbourhood gym, Crunch.

I got in a quick 40-minute run:

It was hard. I tried to read some blogs on my phone as I warmed up, but it was too jarring for my eyes with the bouncing and all. How do others do it? Doesn't it hurt your eyes to read while you run? What's the secret I'm missing here?

This was the best part of my day, by far:

I got this card from my employer, a naturopath with a love for travel. She and I had been working on a number of projects during the time I was with her. Even though she had told me repeatedly how much she appreciates the work I put in, she still got me this cute little card. Simple things like these make leaving both awesome and hard. I remember my first real-person job; teaching English in a small suburb in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. My students (oh my heart) put together a huge "Passport" full of notes and hand-made cards and pictures of how much they enjoyed my classes and how much they'd miss me.... *tear*

And this isn't even my REAL last day yet...

The Best Treadmill Run and Potato

Yesterday, I had the most enjoyable treadmill run ever.

I started out slow, at about 10 km / min for about 3 minutes. Then, every minute thereafter I upped the speed until I was going about 7:45 km / min for the rest of the run.

It felt so good I even "sprinted" the last minute, going AS FAST AS POSSIBLE until the program finished.

After the gym, Steven and I went to the local Westfields shopping centre and shared this bad boy:

That's a Mexican style loaded baked potato: butter, beans, coleslaw, cheese, guacamole, and sour cream.

I am going to be missing this potato HARD once we move back to Canada. I might even write it a love poem. It's THAT good!

The Rain, Oh, the Bloody Non-Stop Rain

The last few days here in Sydney have been pretty rainy. In fact, it's honest-to-goodness been raining for a full week, no breaks.

Unfortunately, it's not supposed to stop any time soon.

Rain has brought out the worst in me. On a good day, I spend most of my time squirreled away indoors, reading The Internet and watching too much TV. On days where it rains non-stop? All productivity grinds to a halt. Let me tell you, Steven's lucky I'm still showering (and I'm only doing so because it's the warmest place in the house! Humidity + no indoor heating = really cold house).

Yesterday, I fell to a new low.

I began watching Bachelor Pad 2012. That's right, I'm watching reality show RERUNS, and I'm hooked.

This morning, however, there was a break in the clouds.

Suddenly I got my mojo back! I was more active in these few hours of sunshine than in the past 5 days!

I took a homemade wrap down to Steven during his lunch hour.

We had some Starbucks until he had to go back to the office. Then, I went home, and decided I wasn't going to wait on my run this week. I had sunshine NOW, so I had better haul ass.

It was the muddiest run in my life.

That water was literally FLOWING down the steps, creating muddy puddles everywhere.

However, I don't think I've ever had so much fun on a run before. I was dodging puddles left and right, leaping, jumping, cross stepping like a pro. I loved the patches of sunshine and new green grass on lawns. I even loved the huge hills and massive downhills. I'm definitely going to miss these neighbourhood runs, especially those bush-walky / trail bits that are just so beautiful.

I'm lucky my Vibrams are lightweight, water-happy shoes because I got them soaked.

Post run, I did some stretching, drank about 3 glasses of juice, and showered. Does anyone know how to gracefully get out of sweaty, sticky work-out clothes without pulling a muscle? I need some sort of shoe horn for workout clothes.

My stats:
4.45 miles in 55:07
Average pace 12:22 min / mile

A Long Australian Weekend: The Queen's Birthday!

Down here, under the equator, the Queen's Birthday is celebrated the second Monday of June. That means it's a long weekend for us working folk!

Steven and I had planned to go to the Blue Mountains to do some sight seeing and tourist-ing, but Lazy, Cheap, and Car-less struck us hard. So, we stayed home.

We did all my favourite things:

Run:

Stretch (ouch):

Eat Japanese Tofu Donburi:

Eat Chimney Cakes from Kurtosh:

Eat pies from Pie Face:

Yes, there was a lot more eating than exercising, and that's the way we like it!

Now, I'm downloading Nike Training Club app so that Steven and I have something to play with the next time we hit the gym. From what I can tell, it looks like a good idea, but the initial download also took like 20 web-minutes (which is really like 3 real minutes), so I've already lost half my interest. There are bonus workouts named after (or created by) famous athletes, like the Kara Goucher Pro Running Stretches that you have to download individually.

By the way, the Kara Goucher Pro Running Stretches workout is EXTREMELY basic. It covers the major areas I always do after a run: low lunge (hip flexor), triangle (outer hip, glute, inner thigh), and IT band (twist with straight leg - she does it supine while I usually do revolved triangle). But it's missing a whole lot of other stuff, like your feet, ankles, calves, quads, piriformis, spine.... yep, the entire spine.... I don't think they did one twist....

Maybe I'll do my own post-run yoga/stretch routine to show you guys... What say you, Interwebs?

Anyway, I'll write a bigger update on what Steven and I think of the Nike Training Club app soon!

Garmin failed me, but I took my run into Unexplored Territory!

It was hard to get started today.

I wheedled and whined, caw-caw-ed and barked (even maybe howled), but I finally got off my butt and went for a run.

At 1:30 PM, I set my Garmin to find my location (like it hasn't found it a bazillion times before).

Apparently, cloudy days makes Garmin sad and confused.

By 1:46, I had decided that Garmin could suck it, downloaded and installed Runkeeper, and was on my way.

I decided to take a new route. Now that I had my phone with me, I wouldn't worry too much about getting lost. I came across a beautiful church.

As I ran along, Runkeeper kept speaking at me in her sweet dulcet tones: "10 minutes, 1.29 miles, average pace blah blah blah"... It was nice to know my stats as I went along!

It also had a nice camera shortcut inside the Runkeeper app, so I didn't have to close Runkeeper to take a picture.

I ran two loops around St Leonard's park, which was full of school kids doing some sort of activity/ athletic competition day.

Runkeeper uses Google maps, which is nice and accurate. (found GPS signals quite quickly, too!)

This is what the screen looks like on my Sony Xperia phone (which really isn't the best smart phone on the market today, but good enough for its price).

I did a total of 3.13 miles in 35:44.

By the time I got home, Garmin was sitting by the window like he was in Time Out for being naughty. But when I turned him around to look at his face, he simply showed the time and date as if nothing had happened...as if I hadn't asked him to find some satellites...as if he hadn't failed me...

Anyway, I think I'll keep Runkeeper around for those cloudy days when Garmin is being a dunce.

Do you use Runkeeper? Do you run with a GPS watch or your phone?

A Snowball Maker? Really?! Because you can't do it yourself?!

It rained nearly ALL WEEKEND. Guuh...

Still, Steven and I braved the wind and rain like little waterproof ninjas and went to the gym.

 By the time I changed out of my wet clothes and into gym clothes, I felt much better. Plus, my lululemon shorts match my new Crunch Fitness T-shirt!

I did a challenging treadmill run with lots of hills and some decent speed.

I'm looooovin' how the treadmill feels on my knees. I haven't had ANY knee pain in weeks, and it's MARVELOUS! Is this what it's like to be healthy?!!?

After the gym, Steven and I grabbed some lunch at the shopping centre nearby and hit up the sales at Rebel Sport, the big chain of sports equipment, shoes, and clothes. It's End Of Financial Year sales here---yes, End of Financial Year in June because for some reason their financial year ends in July.

I found this:

THIS IS A SNOWBALL MAKER.

There were also snowball launchers which looked like giant water guns.

The only thing I have to say is, SERIOUSLY AUSTRALIA?! SERIOUSLY?! How lazy do you have to be to take away the joy of shaping snow in your hands into little killer ice bullets? And then launching them?! You won't even swing and aim with your arm, instead you'd rather use a SNOWBALL LAUNCHER?! C'MON!

Anyway, I got over my incredulity and continued shopping. I really wanted to pick up some new running/gym shirts and possibly a pair of shorts, but I couldn't find anything I really liked, or was cheap enough.

Isn't it disappointing to WANT to buy something but not find anything?

We went home and cooked a nice dinner.

I can't tell you how delicious this dinner is.

It's literally the easiest meal in the world:
Grilled veggies
Grilled Organic Haloumi
chopped parsley and balsamic vinegar

Those are some pretty tasty roasted potatoes next to it, but the real star is the yummy yummy fresh veggies.

What did you do this weekend?

I joined a GYM!

Last night, Steven and I cashed in our savings, sold all our stuff, and sunk our money into our local gym.

Ok, that's not exactly how it happened.

It was more like, "Oh, it's only 71 dollars in total for the month, and I can bring Steven every single time, and I can cancel without penalty?"

"Let me just transfer some money to you and sign this little piece of paper. Thanks."

I am now a proud owner of this beepy tag thing that allows me to enter the Crunch premises.

It sounds weird, but I am looking forward to running on a treadmill on a weekly basis. Not only will it give my knees a break from the unavoidable downhills of North Sydney, but I can also zone out and listen to my beloved Radiolab podcasts without tripping over tree roots, run into poles, or get hit by a car.

Also, Crunch is like the largest gym in gym history (totally made that up), so there's plenty of space for Steven and I to amaze the crowds with our AcroYoga ninja-ness.

What gym have you joined, and why?