Big Week!

So it's been a whole week since my last post. It's not like nothing's happened! Lots has happened! I've just been too busy I guess to write. So hear's a quick rundown of the highlights from the past week. Class work has kept me busy and I'm getting right into things. We already have some assignments and have daily assignments and reading to do. It's interesting theough so it doesn't even really feel like school to me! I worked again this past weekend and got some reading done on the train, 30 pages of my textbook! So that's at least one good thing about spending an hour and a half travelling to and from work every day.

MONDAY JANUARY 26TH:
Woke up early (5AM) and started getting ready for our BIG day! First up was my Australia Day Aquathon here in Wollongong. It was a 900m swim and a 7km run. I haven't swam since September and this was in the ocean, so I wasn't sure how I'd fare, but also wasn't terribly worried. I shoulda been. I dunno what happened. Right from the outset I seeded myself towards the back as I didn't want to get swum over, these are Australians after all. So I got into somewhat of a rhythm and even thought to myself that I had a lot of space and it all felt ok. Then we converged on the first "buoy" (concrete block of some sort in the harbour) and I realized I was back in a typical triathlon swim. So I got beat up a little, goggle issues (I think I need to switch to my new ones as I had poor visibility) the usual stuff. I felt like it was taking forever and came out of the water after loop one and looked at my watch... it said 14:xx... FOR 450M! WTF?! So I'm trying to tell myself that maybe the course is long, maybe this lap will be faster 'cause we're more spread out now. Not so much, lap two sucked worse and I came out in like 33 minues and change... I was pissed. I've since heard it was longer than a km, but nevertheless I was one of the last out of the water... including the women who started after me. I was pissed, and felt really dizzy when I got to my shoes. OH, did I mention that I swam it topless. Nobody wears tri top here so I said F*** it and took mine off too. Whatever. After the swim though I was like whatever and threw on my team overdrive tri shirt and started running. It was pretty overcast so it wasn't too too hot and I felt comfortable. I started running and eventually got into it, and just focused on passing people. I passed A LOT of people, and didn't get passed at all (I guess that happens when you're already at the back of the pack), but nevertheless I was having fun passing a ton of men. So my run time was around 29 minutes (still waiting on official chip times) which is pretty good for me, especially since much of the run was on grass/trail/sand so footing wasn't great. i could really feel myself going faster on pavement. Oh well. Better luck next time, maybe it's time to get in the pool and learn to SWIM. :) I had fun though, and am glad i did it. PS - I got beat by a girl in my class, Katie. She started 3 minutes behind me and came out of the water well ahead of me. i caught her in the run, but not until like 5km in and didn't have enough real estate to take back those 3 mins, lol. She came in about a minute and half after me, so really a minute and a half ahead of me. all goooood.

So then we went home and changed and headed to the train to take us to Sydney for Australia day! We were all decked out in our Australia gear (hat, shirt, tattoos) and were ready for a party (vodka and breakfast juice). We met up with Katie again and her housemate Clint, some girls from a few doors down and my buddy Derek and his girlfriend (same situation as Julia) and we all travelled together. We got to Sydney around 1PM and met up with our housemates (Kym, Michelle, Lee) at Darling harbour. There was lots going on and we walked around for a bit and got a little tipsy (haha, all good fun). It's funny because I think we Canadians were the most dressed up of ANYONE there. I mean there were a ton of people dressed up and such, but we looked gooood. Some asian people asked us for pictures... ahaha. We walked to Sydney harbour as the others hadn't been there yet. The digeridoo guys were there and I got my pic taken with him and bought his CD ($10). It's good stuff. So then the big group of us walked halfway accross the bridge but it started misting... then misting harder. Really weird. So we decided it'd be best to go find a place to eat and chill out for a bit as it was dinner time and fireworks were in a few hours. We started getting chilly, and took us a while to find a place that wasn't packed, closed or ridiculously expensive. The 9 of us had a quaint little dinner and all decided to forget about fireworks and make our way home. So we did. End of story. OH wait, there were these retarded drunk (SOMEWHAT) entertaining kids on the train. But more annoying than entertaining.

I was tired. Still am. but Jared gets here tonight, so I gotta find some energy somewhere!

PS - Looking for a tri bike. Gotta make IMWA work. Gotta.