Blogging Break

Been a bit busy and distant lately, i.e not been writing on here much nor have been reading other runners' blogs, but hopefully I'm back now and ready to catch up on what I've missed and all your stories and holiday posts.

Haven't been running much either, but maybe this is my natural taper before the marathon on Thursday, rather than have just been too busy or travelling around showing my mum China? Nope, it was the latter, but hey-ho, it can surely act as a taper yes?

So, yes, the marathon (the FULL marathon) is only two days away, and I am quite unprepared for it hey. Or so it seems. Also, think we may have eaten some dodgy (but so delicious at the time) sushi on Sunday arvo which we're paying for now. So, fingers crossed am back to good health by Thursday morning.

One thing that will definitely help in my full marathon quest is THIS:

Oh yes, that IS a Garmin/running watch! Courtesy of my excellent brother and sister-in-law (and Husband for putting the idea out there) - sooo chuffed! I will now join the ranks of 'proper' runners, and will no longer be a vague or zen runner (well, sometimes anyway).

In other exciting news: I finally gave my English/Chinese speech about running to the whole school yesterday morning, after weeks of it getting postponed (which was fine by me - I kind of thought they would just forget about it eventually). It wasn't too bad, I think, but I was very tired and had sort of just rolled out of bed, so am sure my well rehearsed speech of a few weeks ago would have been much more coherent. Hey-ho, apparently they could understand it, so all good.

Amazingly I wasn't nervous, maybe this was helped by being forced on stage in front of approximately two thirds of the school a few days prior to this, as part of a 'program' they wanted us 'laowei' teachers to perform as part of the Grade 7 and Grade 8 end of year show.

Last minute as ever, they told us that morning, then we ran around tyring to get some music sorted, but the internet had problems, then when we eventually thought it was all good, and music was in hand on our USB, turns out, oh no, it wasn't there and we had to go out sans-music and perform. Oh joy. Husband was singing, bless him, with me and my mum waving an Australian flag, as he belted out the traditional 'Waltzing Matilda' to the happy, encouraging faces of our students:

And, phew, that other performance or 'program' we were told to prepare for? That has since been cancelled. Good news for us. This on-stage performance malarkey gets a bit exhausting.




I'm off to pack and organise some things for our Xiamen trip tomorrow morning. Happy New Year's Eve everyone!