A week in Canberra

It's only been a week in Canberra, but it feels like much longer. That might be interpreted as meaning that I've been having a crap time, but it's been quite the opposite:) I'm really enjoying life here. It's my kind of city with heaps of running trails just outside my door and bike lanes on every road. Within 5km, one can escape the 'urban jungle' (the term hardly seems to apply when there are so many trees dotted within the landscape) and be out in the bush. There's no sense of being crowded out, and things feel relaxed without being dull. I could definitely seeing myself living here permanently.

Intellectually, I have never been so stimulated. I'm learning an enormous amount because my research project (setting the groundwork for using photosynthetic enzymes to generate Hydrogen gas that could be crucial for a cost effective 'hydrogen economy') is just so interesting and dare I say it, important. My supervisors are very supportive and seem to really value my small contribution and keen to share their knowledge. Meal times (three hot meals a day that I don't have to prepare myself: what a luxury:P) have been terrific, providing an opportunity to talk to all the other summer scholars (all 170 of them) about their projects or just have great conversations about pretty much anything. We've had social events organised for us every night for the last week, which was a great opportunity to meet everyone else. It's tapering off now, but now that everyone knows each other, fun stuff seems to happen spontaneously. Last night we had a fun (and exhausting) game of ultimate frisbee followed by touch rugby (which surprise, surprise, all the kiwis dominated at:P).

Things are going well on the exercise front too. I've been getting out for a run every morning and have started an informal running group to ease the 'loneliness of the distance runner'. Four of us headed out this morning and judging by the number of people who've expressed interest today, it's only going to grow.

Despite the consistent morning jogs, I was feeling a bit guilty about my low monthly total for November (only 45 hrs:S), so tried to really work my body hard over the weekend. Headed out for a ride on Saturday morning, going down the Federal hwy out to Collector, where I was hoping to purchase some kind of sugary substance to revive me for the ride back. Unfortunately, the town appeared to be completely dead, so I had to turn back with only water in my bottles, but still managed to finish off the 130km ride without hitting the wall. There were some good hills along the way that I tried to really attack, and it felt pretty good. Got back absolutely starving, and scared people by eating about five plates of food:P

That evening I rode out to the AIS track for an ACT Athletics track meet. My left knee had suffered quite badly from the morning's efforts and I was in two minds whether to race or not, but it didn't bother me in my warmup, so I decided to have a crack at the 1500. There were only two heats, and I spotted a few AIS tops in the first heat, so decided to give that a miss (wise decision as the loser did 4:30 - I would've been lapped by the winner who did 4:03). The second heat consisted of a lot of young girls and two old men. When a girl who looked like she was about 10 took the lead, I couldn't bear the shame and moved up. It was a poorly paced race that saw me fade badly, only just holding off the 10 year old before being pipped literally on the line by a 16 year old to finish in 4:58 or something rubbish like that. Not a great result at all, but I had been feeling completely flaked out after the ride, so perhaps not surprising.

On Sunday, I sought to make up for it by breaking my 24 hr pushup PB. Over the course of an afternoon, I gutted out 600 pushups in between reading wikipedia articles (started out on 'carbonic anhydrase' and before long was reading about 'Mad pride' with another 50 tabs open:P). I was really pleased with that as it means I have now completed one leg of my 'Twenty four hour challenge'. It'd be awesome if I was in shape to do the whole thing by the end of summer. I think I'm almost there, but bringing it all together on one day will be tough!