Murphy's Law is a bitch, but Karma trumps all...apparently
It has kind of snuck up on me but this week was to end with a race. I'd signed up for Run Melbourne some time ago and since then, it had just an event some time in the future. Now the race was imminent and, based upon how the week began I was holding out some concerns about how the day would pan out.
You may have previously read of the events of last Sunday, allow me elaborate and add some context.
In this case, the story starts on the Saturday of last week, the day we bought our new TV.
I had been wanting to purchase a nice "big screen" for quite some time but either finances or circumstances prevented us from actually doing so. Finally, the stars aligned and we brought home a new 32" LCD (this being the largest screen that will fit in the cabinet we have).
Back home with everything plugged in and switched on, there was only one thing missing, the channels... turns out the added electrical noise introduced by the TV was too much for the cheap ALDI aerial being used.
Fortunately, the only channels that were strong enough to come through were the SBS ones so we were still able to watch le Tour.
Sunday morning we discovered that the availability of just the 4 SBS channels meant we had the choice of watching the news in like 8 different languages and not much else. The situation needed a solution and I was rather tempted to revert back to the smaller screen in exchange of viewing variety.
We had been scheduled to visit the wife's side of the family for a birthday but, since The Boy was ill, the plans changed slightly and I stayed home with him whilst the girls headed of for the celebration. With this opportunity to stay home I figured a quick visit to a local electronics store was on the cards. Try as I might though, The Boy flat refused to leave the house all day so instead I used the interwebs to order a replacement aerial. To speed the process, I chose not to have it posted, instead, scheduled an instore pick-up for the following day.
Plans changed again later in the day when I received a call from a distressed wife. She'd been heading out to the car to come home, tripped and fallen and, based upon the sharp snapping sound she'd heard, the situation was not good.
With an ambulance ride, x-rays and a taxi ride we arrived home with a rental pair of crutches, a diagnosed "bad sprain" and no prospect that any one would be driving to Dick Smith to pick up the aerial.
Another morning of watching multi-lingual news was too much and a new plan was hatched to rectify the problem. Since it was a Work From Home / Carers day for me, a visiting friend offered to be my temporary chauffeur for a triple mercy run. Grab the required aerial, pick up some pain relief drugs and some trashy magazines (apparently also part of the wife's treatment). Stop one sorted out the drugs and mags but before we moved off I decided to grab some cash from a handy ATM. Insert card, enter PIN, watch system crash due to local power failure. I guess that ATM hadn't been so handy afterall.
5 minutes later, following a full system reboot of the ATM it was official, no returned card and no means of paying for the new aerial...
Confident that the universe is trying to tell me that I was to become one with SBS I head back home. Turns out the wife does not share the views of the universe and, more to the point, her opinion overrides it. We are shortly back on the road with the wife's ATM card and strict instructions not to return empty handed. We acquiesce and by lunch time our new television is complete (more or less, but who needs channel 7 any way...?) and the wife moves her recovery to the bedroom, injured foot raised and remote control close to hand.
There is something you should know about the universe, the universe doesn't appreciate its will being usurped and the universe is vindictive. Mid-afternoon, the new aerial was rendered useless and the hard won channels were promptly snatched away. A power failure in the master safety switch knocked out all of the power points in the house. We now had even lost SBS and the ability to watch the Hindi news.
Tuesday, 3:30 in the afternoon and the power is finally restored and I figure the week is finally about to turn around. That was until the wife took the compression tube off of her injured ankle and realised the predicted reduction of swelling had not occurred, quite the opposite actually...
To summarise, here is a brief run down of the next few days.
The wife spent another 4 hours in the doctor's surgery getting a second opinion, which didn't shed any light, yielding only the promise of a followup appointment next week.
A wallet I'd ordered from Amazon.com arrived, with a delivery price twice that of the delivered item. The "leather" mentioned in the description of it seemed to refer only to the texture of the crappy vinyl. It did have the bonus of containing "chemicals known...to cause cancer" so that's something.
The Boy got sicker and he shared his poor health with his mother and then me.
Also, my shoulder, which had been sore for a few days was not improving.
I admitted defeat and had to book my first ever appointment with a Physio. Now, I have been competing in triathlon for several years now and have put it a lot of long kms training and commuting but have never sustained an injury that required treatment. The activity that brought that to an end was watching TV...
It was suggested that I should buy a lottery ticket, this run of luck had to turn sometime right!?
Saturday night I took that advice and bought a number of names in a Tour de France sweeps.
Later that evening, by the intimediary sprint of the stage I had got my investment back in the form of a voucher for The Bike Lab.
Early start on Sunday and much buoyed by my win in the sweeps I was less pessimistic for the Half Marathon. After catching the tail end of the illness The Boy had brought home I was really just looking at the race as a training run. I made sure I had my Garmin for the run but used it only to record the activity and to let me know when to take on my nutrition. Instead of checking the GPS to monitor my pace I worked to a comfortable perceived effort.
At the half way point of the race I hit the split and checked the readout for the first time. I was happily surprised to note I was on track for another sub 2 hour race. Around for the second lap of the course and at the 20km point I made a decision. That was it, no one else was going to pass me today, accordingly, I picked up the pace.
In the run up the final climb there was one guy wh appeared to be unaware of my pact and had the audacity to run past. I kept him insight though and in the run into the finish line I broke into a sprint, caught and passed him then stopped the clock at 1:52:38. Some how I had been able to record another PB (if you take into account the extra 400 metres I'd run due to weaving through slower runners)
Speaking to wife after the race I learned that my luck from the Tour sweeps the night prior had yielded further fruit, to my prize of the $100 voucher I had added an $800 wetsuit!
After such a crappy start to the week, it finished on a much better note and I am now watching le Tour in simulated 3D on my nice new screen.
What a change a few days can make!
It has kind of snuck up on me but this week was to end with a race. I'd signed up for Run Melbourne some time ago and since then, it had just an event some time in the future. Now the race was imminent and, based upon how the week began I was holding out some concerns about how the day would pan out.
You may have previously read of the events of last Sunday, allow me elaborate and add some context.
In this case, the story starts on the Saturday of last week, the day we bought our new TV.
I had been wanting to purchase a nice "big screen" for quite some time but either finances or circumstances prevented us from actually doing so. Finally, the stars aligned and we brought home a new 32" LCD (this being the largest screen that will fit in the cabinet we have).
Back home with everything plugged in and switched on, there was only one thing missing, the channels... turns out the added electrical noise introduced by the TV was too much for the cheap ALDI aerial being used.
Fortunately, the only channels that were strong enough to come through were the SBS ones so we were still able to watch le Tour.
Sunday morning we discovered that the availability of just the 4 SBS channels meant we had the choice of watching the news in like 8 different languages and not much else. The situation needed a solution and I was rather tempted to revert back to the smaller screen in exchange of viewing variety.
We had been scheduled to visit the wife's side of the family for a birthday but, since The Boy was ill, the plans changed slightly and I stayed home with him whilst the girls headed of for the celebration. With this opportunity to stay home I figured a quick visit to a local electronics store was on the cards. Try as I might though, The Boy flat refused to leave the house all day so instead I used the interwebs to order a replacement aerial. To speed the process, I chose not to have it posted, instead, scheduled an instore pick-up for the following day.
Plans changed again later in the day when I received a call from a distressed wife. She'd been heading out to the car to come home, tripped and fallen and, based upon the sharp snapping sound she'd heard, the situation was not good.
With an ambulance ride, x-rays and a taxi ride we arrived home with a rental pair of crutches, a diagnosed "bad sprain" and no prospect that any one would be driving to Dick Smith to pick up the aerial.
Another morning of watching multi-lingual news was too much and a new plan was hatched to rectify the problem. Since it was a Work From Home / Carers day for me, a visiting friend offered to be my temporary chauffeur for a triple mercy run. Grab the required aerial, pick up some pain relief drugs and some trashy magazines (apparently also part of the wife's treatment). Stop one sorted out the drugs and mags but before we moved off I decided to grab some cash from a handy ATM. Insert card, enter PIN, watch system crash due to local power failure. I guess that ATM hadn't been so handy afterall.
5 minutes later, following a full system reboot of the ATM it was official, no returned card and no means of paying for the new aerial...
Confident that the universe is trying to tell me that I was to become one with SBS I head back home. Turns out the wife does not share the views of the universe and, more to the point, her opinion overrides it. We are shortly back on the road with the wife's ATM card and strict instructions not to return empty handed. We acquiesce and by lunch time our new television is complete (more or less, but who needs channel 7 any way...?) and the wife moves her recovery to the bedroom, injured foot raised and remote control close to hand.
There is something you should know about the universe, the universe doesn't appreciate its will being usurped and the universe is vindictive. Mid-afternoon, the new aerial was rendered useless and the hard won channels were promptly snatched away. A power failure in the master safety switch knocked out all of the power points in the house. We now had even lost SBS and the ability to watch the Hindi news.
Tuesday, 3:30 in the afternoon and the power is finally restored and I figure the week is finally about to turn around. That was until the wife took the compression tube off of her injured ankle and realised the predicted reduction of swelling had not occurred, quite the opposite actually...
To summarise, here is a brief run down of the next few days.
The wife spent another 4 hours in the doctor's surgery getting a second opinion, which didn't shed any light, yielding only the promise of a followup appointment next week.
A wallet I'd ordered from Amazon.com arrived, with a delivery price twice that of the delivered item. The "leather" mentioned in the description of it seemed to refer only to the texture of the crappy vinyl. It did have the bonus of containing "chemicals known...to cause cancer" so that's something.
The Boy got sicker and he shared his poor health with his mother and then me.
Also, my shoulder, which had been sore for a few days was not improving.
I admitted defeat and had to book my first ever appointment with a Physio. Now, I have been competing in triathlon for several years now and have put it a lot of long kms training and commuting but have never sustained an injury that required treatment. The activity that brought that to an end was watching TV...
It was suggested that I should buy a lottery ticket, this run of luck had to turn sometime right!?
Saturday night I took that advice and bought a number of names in a Tour de France sweeps.
Later that evening, by the intimediary sprint of the stage I had got my investment back in the form of a voucher for The Bike Lab.
Early start on Sunday and much buoyed by my win in the sweeps I was less pessimistic for the Half Marathon. After catching the tail end of the illness The Boy had brought home I was really just looking at the race as a training run. I made sure I had my Garmin for the run but used it only to record the activity and to let me know when to take on my nutrition. Instead of checking the GPS to monitor my pace I worked to a comfortable perceived effort.
At the half way point of the race I hit the split and checked the readout for the first time. I was happily surprised to note I was on track for another sub 2 hour race. Around for the second lap of the course and at the 20km point I made a decision. That was it, no one else was going to pass me today, accordingly, I picked up the pace.
In the run up the final climb there was one guy wh appeared to be unaware of my pact and had the audacity to run past. I kept him insight though and in the run into the finish line I broke into a sprint, caught and passed him then stopped the clock at 1:52:38. Some how I had been able to record another PB (if you take into account the extra 400 metres I'd run due to weaving through slower runners)
Speaking to wife after the race I learned that my luck from the Tour sweeps the night prior had yielded further fruit, to my prize of the $100 voucher I had added an $800 wetsuit!
After such a crappy start to the week, it finished on a much better note and I am now watching le Tour in simulated 3D on my nice new screen.
What a change a few days can make!
No comments:
Post a Comment