August 14

I'm going to include in this post some more pictures from my weekend in Sydney. :)

I went to bed early last night, tired from the weekend of traveling and the City to Surf. This morning I got up at 8:00am. I am definitely sore today. My left foot hurt yesterday after I was done with the race (probably because I've only done one distance run since I've been here, and I just ran a 14K!), but today it feels better. This morning I woke up with much stiffer muscles and a lot more soreness than I had yesterday. Whenever I get up from a chair I am reminded of the race. It feels good though. It reminds me that I ran a good race.

This afternoon right before I was going to go to class Mick, one of the guys on my floor who is in that class, reminded me that our lectures today were cancelled. Yay. I didn't go grocery shopping last Thursday since I went up to Sydney, so I decided to go this afternoon instead. I stocked up on veggies and everything else I was getting low on and should be good for another week or so.

I stopped by a shoe store ("Athlete's Foot") in the mall and was looking at the still outrageously high-priced shoes that they sell there. I got talking to the one guy that worked there about shoes and what I was interested in and the city to surf, etc. It turns out he did the City to Surf but he was coming back from an injury and ended up getting reinjured and bailing out about half way through the race. We talked about running shoes, about the guy who won, the Canberra dudes that came in 2nd, 3rd, and I believe 5th, and about 10k's that I might be able to do in Canberra in the next few weeks. I asked him about why Asics shoes were so expensive here, double the price that I can get them in the U.S. I told him that I could get my shoes for $90 U.S. brand new back home (about $115-120 Australian) and he said that's cheaper than the cost he has to pay. He told me I would be better off just ordering new shoes in the U.S. and having them shipped over here since it would be cheaper that way. It's crazy how importing goods can cause such dramatic price differences in different countries. I'm not sure how much I am going to run here the rest of this semester (only 3 months till I go home!), so I don't know if it will be worth getting new shoes sent over. Plus I have to wait and see how my foot feels when I get back to running on Thursday or Friday (test on Thursday so I'm not going to run until after that). If it hurts to run then I'll probably take a couple weeks off. If not, then I don't think I'm going to be running enough miles to make it worth getting new shoes. Heck, people run barefoot and are fine, I can run with old shoes and be fine, right? :)

This evening after supper I took a break from studying to watch Australian Idol. It was funny watching some of the rediculous auditions. Some auditions were actually pretty good though. I guess tonight's show was narrowing it down to the final 100 that are actually going to go on to battle it out on stage on Idol. Blocka, one of the guys on this floor, has a friend ("mate") from his home town that tried out and he informed us has made it to the top-24. It's crazy knowing that before they even have it narrowed down to 100 on TV. Anyway tonight was the night his mate was supposed to be on, so we watched in anticipation of seeing him. He ended up doing a song where he played guitar and sang, and he was really good. I don't know about him having the ability to make it all the way, but it was cool to see him and know that I live with his friend. I've never had that happen on American Idol before. :-P