January 27 - Australia: Cairns
Heidi's Run - The Pelican Brief
My runs are really run/walks as I try to get myself back in running shape. So I run for 3 minutes and walk for 1 minute, and once my body gets used to this abuse then I'll increase the run times. We'll see how it all works out. For now, I keep my workouts to the Esplanade despite the lack of shade. At least there I don't have to oncoming traffic aside from the occasional cyclist.
The Esplanade
I've been listening to a group called "Killing Heidi" on my MP3 player. Burkie loaned me the CD and we downloaded it to the laptop. They're a pretty good band, but not as hard-core as I was expecting. They seem to be mix between "The Sundays" and "No Doubt", if you can imagine that.
Some mornings, there is a small flock of Pelicans on a sand bar just off the Esplanade. They're not always there, but this morning they were and each time I ran past them I wished I'd had my camera. So when I got home, instead of stretching and then showering I grabbed my camera and hopped into the truck to get down to The Pier before they flew away.
The Cairns Pelicans
These birds are the size of a five year old child. I mean it - they're huge! And absolutely beautiful.
Do you know where Nebraska is?: Jon's run #52
Today was my long run day. I've decided that if I am actually serious about trying to run a marathon on May 5 then I had better start getting in some quality long runs. I'm doing about 25-30 miles a week but mostly by running 6-8 miles every day for 4 or 5 days a week. So I know I need to do my long runs on Sundays and when I get home I'll see if I can't find a marathon that is actually on the west coast. When I headed out this morning I noticed the clouds hanging in the valley that makes up Cairns. Cairns is surrounded by several large mountains and in the morning clouds tend to hang in the valley for a little bit until the morning sun burns them off. Anyway, I decided to head in the direction of the nearest mountain and see if I could get a nice view of the city and maybe even some of the great houses up there as well. Afterwards I conned Heidi into bringing the camera and coming along for a drive so now I have a picture to share from my run.
A view of Cairns from Jon's run
Heidi and I are pretty much New Yorkers now. We don't have the accent but we do have the "New Yorkers view of the world". Several years ago there was a cartoon on the cover of New Yorker magazine. The cover was a sketch of how New Yorkers view the US using a map as the illustration. On the right coast was a huge island with skyskrapers and a great big park and next to that was a barren stretch of land that very quickly made it's way to Los Angeles or San Francisco or something. The point being that to a New Yorker New York City is the center or the universe and most of the rest of the country is just a means of getting to one or two big cities in California. That's it, nothing else in between. This is important because in my excitement to find a marathon that was being held on a date that fit into our schedule I found the Lincoln, Nebraska marathon. OK, Nebraska is in the midwest, with "west" being a key word here I thought. So I knew we'd be in Portland around April 25 or so and then Seattle so I figured we could be in Nebraska in 2 days or so and not really miss much if we just drove flat-out between Washington state and Nebraska. Did you know that Nebraska is about 1,500 miles away from Seattle??!! I had to go to the internet and actually look up a map of the US to figure this out. Needless to say, we'd miss quite a bit by driving flat-out to get to Nebraska. OK, maybe just missing hours and hours of passing row upon row of corn, but hey, that qualifies as a cultural experience doesn't it?
So to make an already long story short, I did some research last night on the internet and found a marathon that fits into our schedule better. It's the Adidas Vancouver Marathon and it's held on May 5, 2002 as well. We hadn't actually planned on heading to Canada but since it's only a couple of hours from Seattle we figure we can fit it in. I even checked on a map and Seattle and Vancouver are actually close to each other! Now I just need to get myself in shape for this thing. If I use the training regimen that I used for the last Marine Corps Marathon that I ran in 2000 then I'll have to skip up to week 5 of an 18 week training schedule, but on the bright side I get Monday's off so I'll have tomorrow off!
Day of Studying
We spent the rest of the day doing our Knowledge Reviews and reading through PADI material. We had about 50 pages of Knowledge Reviews that included referencing books such as The Business of Diving, The Law of Diving, The Best of the Undersea Journal, The Instructor Candidate Workbook, and the massive Instructor Manual. Whew! Tomorrow, we plan to go to the pool to practice our skills again.