Half Marathon and New Wheels

This is a bit random, but I finally ate my Q-Cup (cup-of-noodle soup) I grabbed from the free bin in a hostel in Hobart last April. The little pig faces are pretty funny.

Last night was kinda nice--after spending all day at BoZo we went to Garema Place in Civic to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. During the summer, the city shows films by projecting them onto a large screen in the middle of the town centre for people to watch "under the stars". Despite not being able to hear very well (the direction of the speakers made the sound fluffy and it was impossible to understand conversations in the movie), and not following the plot of Harry Potter (I never read the books), it was still nice to have a night out with Seth.

After the movie we went to stay the night at BoZo. We had always half-joked about sleeping there, but last night we finally decided to do it. The main reason why we wouldn't normally sleep there is that the cleaners come in during the week around 4 or 5am and it would be weird if they came in. Sleeping there went really well--in fact, it was probably the best sleep we had in over a week. We had lots of warm, comfy blankets, and we each had our own full-sized pillow. The only strange thing was that the hall light was on and I woke up at 4:30am thinking it was day-light and thought I had overslept.

Sleeping at BoZo was especially convenient because I woke up early to meet with Kaima across the street at Johns, and we went together to Black Mtn Peninsula for the Weston Creek Half Marathon. I decided not to register because I had only run two road races before (both 5K) so wasn't sure how a half-marathon would go. Also, I am coming down with a cold and felt like I probably wouldn't run my best.

Kaima was great company, except that he thought he dropped my student card a few kilometers into the race and ran all the way back to look for it--when he caught up with me around 8K, he saw that I was actually holding it! He ran just for fun and helped keep my pace up. I first began hanging out with Kaima last year when training for IB with him--he is planning to run again this year and has been running quite long distances three times a week. In fact, he had already run yesterday (about 20K), and will run again tomorrow! To help train for IB, today he even carried a pack with several litres of water (and my camera) during the race!

I finished the 21K in 1:53:58 and based on the race results from last year think I placed about in the middle of female entrants.
This afternoon, I went to Julien and Heather's house. They are ex-Johns ressies and Julien is a good runner-friend of Seth's (and a bike wizard). Julien helped clean up my grimy bike and popped on my new semi-slick tyres I ordered before leaving for NZ. I figured the smooth tyres would be much faster for commuting when I live off campus!