daynemay

Congratulations to my cuz, Lok Seeto, who is – as far as I know – the first to reach 10507 pushups in the competition.
I, meanwhile, am still dicking around in the high 2000s – Lok has blasted me. Top work, mate!

Hey all. I’ve just scored the vanity Facebook URL http://facebook.com/missionrecall for my webcomic (Mission: Recall, funnily enough). It took 25 “Likes”, and Danielle and Aleysha just put it over the line. Thanks to everyone who made it happen, and special thanks to those two – it’s been sitting at 23 for a while now.

OK, the previously bandied-about competition is on like some kind of large, simian video-game character.
If you’re keen on doing push-ups until you’re no longer keen on doing push-ups, then I’m your Huckleberry.

Facebook event here: 10507: The push-up competition.

Thanks for the bandying-about, Reubs.

Not long ago, I happened to look up push-up world records, and in short order, I was blown the fuck away by the notion of people doing over 10,000 push-ups in one session.
I’m under no illusions about my ability to replicate that kind of feat, or anything even remotely like it. But it would be nice to ramp up the number of push-ups I can do.
So this morning, I had the following idea:
A competition (between me and… you, if you’re interested), to see who can do some agreed number of push-ups the quickest. I want the number to be high – more than 100, more than 1000, more than I (we) can do in one big weekend push. I want it high enough that, if I want to win, I have to commit to incorporating push-ups into my routine, rather than taking a few days out of my routine and just going push-up-crazy^[1]. I’m thinking 50,000, but I’m open to negotiation.
This being 2011, I think it only just and fair that all pushups be filmed and uploaded to Youtube or something, too – not exactly riveting viewing, but it would be something to point to after the fact, and could open the field to things like challenging someone’s form, or whatever.
Finally, I’m not even going to consider starting this until after Marcia and I arrive in Canada in October.
Your thoughts? Anyone interested? Suggestions on how to run/score/whatever it?

_{[1] Yes, it’s a real thing. I think I saw it in the DSM-IV}

Results are in. I ran a 1:09:18 in the 2011 City2Surf. I’m more than happy with that.

I’m hitting up the City2Surf in Sydney this Sunday. My times over the last couple of years have been decent (for me), but both of those were coming off the back of training for the Gold Coast marathon. This year, training’s been a lot less serious. It remains to be seen how badly this will affect my time. I’ll find out Sunday, I guess.

Aside: I just looked up my times over the last couple of years. They are (net) 1:14:41 (2009) and 1:06:54 (2010). I don’t remember being that fast (for me) last year. Ordinarily I’d put it down to a dodgy memory, but I know there’s another Dayne May out there, who also runs a bit. He did the Gold Coast half in 2009 and full in 2010, and caused a bit of confusion among my friends. I wonder if I’m claiming his time here. If so, sorry Dayne!

Uh, yeah. So that was a big ol’ load of crap all those months (14!) ago when I talked big about getting back on top of that whole blogging thing.
I won’t embarrass myself with any similar proclamations now.
I will, however, point out my latest project (and partial excuse for that lapse), Mission: Recall – “a webcomic of poorly remembered pop culture”. In reality, this means “single frame gags based on the fact that actors play different characters in different movies” – e.g. James Earl Jones is (the voice of) both Darth Vader in Star Wars and Mufasa in The Lion King, so I’ve “confused” the two in the comic Our kingdom. It made sense to me at the time.

I’ve tried to get all the usual foolishness going – there’s a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a t-shirt shop Ambitious? Definitely – but I’ve sold 7 so far, and only 5 were to myself. Admittedly the other two were to the little woman and to my sister…

So anyway: go check it out, be appropriately confused, or entertained, or whatever. Follow, Like, tweet, subscribe, promote, abuse or react to it as you will. All suggestions welcome.

…from me, and from a surly-looking Santa Claus channeling Dr. Evazan. All three of us wish you a happy holiday.

A public statement of intention demands an equally public acknowledgement of failure, so here it is: I did not run the Tan Ultra last weekend. My excuse – that I’m in Perth, and the Tan Ultra was in Melbourne, almost 3500km away – is just that, an excuse. Had I been sufficiently serious, I could have found a way (to the start line at least, not necessarily the finish). But I didn’t.

Firstly, no, I’m not planning to only write about running here, but I’m doing a fair bit of it at the moment, so you in turn get to hear a fair bit about it. Feel free to ignore every word.
As I’ve mentioned, I signed up for the terrifying (to me, at least) Tan Ultra. A common component to the ultra training programmes that I’ve seen is the “long run sandwich” – weekends with a long run on both days. Up until this weekend, the biggest sandwich I’d done was 90 minutes on Saturday and 3 hours on Sunday. That’s pretty big (again: to me, anyway), but this weekend stepped things up to 4 hours on Saturday and 3 on Sunday.
Saturday: I was interested to see how I’d handle 4 hours, but I wasn’t looking forward to it. Four hours is longer than I’d ever run in one go before, but it turned out pretty much as I expected: painful, not unbearable, great to have finished. I managed 43km, as best I can tell (shout-out to the footbridges missing from Google Maps). The “marathon as training run” aspect made for a nice ego massage on Saturday night, and (I’m sure) some pretty boring conversation for those lucky enough to be around me at the time – and now you!
Sunday: After Saturday’s effort, I wasn’t enthusiastic about another 3 hours, but around 4:00pm, I forced myself out and did another 34km or so – nine laps of Prince’s Park, plus there and back, from home.
I’m kind of in awe of these numbers, so if I sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet, that’s why.
I’m still pretty wigged out by the idea of 100km in 12 hours, though. 43km one day and 34km the next is a lot different from 77km in one outing, let alone 100km. But I can almost picture a world in which I can do it. It looks a lot like this one, except with much sorer feet.

Just over a year ago, I decided to have a crack at my first marathon. To force myself to commit, I made my intentions known on this blog, and overall, it worked out pretty well.

I’m employing that strategy again now. Lately I’ve been contemplating the Tan Ultra, 100km^[1] in a maximum of 12 hours. I’ve signed up for it and I’ve been training as if I will do it. But so far, I’ve reserved the right to back out on the day. I’m not confident that I can run 100km inside 12 hours (or y’know… at all); even my longer training runs on the weekend (~30km at the moment, increasing weekly) have started to intimidate me.

So here it is. I’ll run the Tan Ultra in August this year. I may not finish, and I’ll definitely feel like shit at the end of that 12 hours, but I will give it a shot. Again, wish me luck.

[1] Well, almost 100km. 25 laps of the 3.8 km Tan.

I’ve ignored this blog for a long time. As of right now though, I’m planning to get it back into active service. Don’t expect anything too amazing, but I’d like to post at least something here, at least once or twice a week. We’ll see how that goes. Expect a lot of Youtube videos, to save myself the burden of original expression.
I’ve also moved the whole thing from http://daynemay.com to http://blog.daynemay.com, to free up the main URL for all the amazing things that I’m won’t do with it, but could, in a hypothetical universe exactly like this one, except with a version of me who actually pulls his finger out from time to time. That move has broken a few things. I’m slowing fixing them, but if there’s something you think needs particular attention, let me know and I’ll take a look. Of minor note: RSS feeds are likely to stay broken until at least mid-June.

testing rss feed(s)

“And they shouldn’t fence at night or they’re going to hurt the gymnasts.”

Saying a thing is secure doesn’t make it so.

From an interesting article in The Daily Mail, quoting Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run:

In a paper for the British Journal Of Sports Medicine last year, Dr Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed there are no evidence-based studies that demonstrate running shoes make you less prone to injury. Not one.

Worth a read, if you’re into running.

Yesterday was the Geelong half-marathon, my “debut at this distance”, as the online registration form puts it.

I wasn’t sure of a realistic target time, but I decided I’d be happy with anything under 2 hours. In the end I managed a 1:46:something (official times not yet posted as of this writing), which was satisfying.

A few things I learned along the way:

- I could have gone slightly harder at the beginning.
- Grabbing plastic cups while on the run is not as easy as it looks. I opted for the “pinch-from-the-top” technique, which worked pretty well.
- I have to focus more on running my own race, and less on not letting other people pass me.
- If I am going to get into a battle with someone, I should at least be sure of who it is.

A little explication of the last point is in order:

I started towards the back of the pack, so most of the (many) people who were faster than me were already ahead. This meant that I overtook quite a few people, while not being overtaken very often.
Around the 17km mark, I noticed a maroon shirt out of the corner of my eye. I turned and looked, and there was a guy closing in on me. I sized him up – around my age, heavier than me, breathing raggedly – and decided that he allowed to past.

I put on the pace for a little while and put some distance between us before easing back off. A few minutes later, I heard him coming up behind me and saw that maroon shirt in the corner of my vsion, so I put on the pace again.

This happened four or five times over the next couple of kilometres and eventually it became too much for me. I decided to smarten up, let him past, and run my own race. I maintained a steady pace, paid no attention to the maroon shirt cruising into my periph, and lo and behold, it was an entirely different guy – older, fitter, definitely a runner, also wearing a maroon shirt. I turned and looked behind me for the original Maroon Shirt, and he was nowhere to be seen. I felt sort of stupid about the whole thing, but it probably did shave a couple of minutes off my time.

Update: Big thanks to Cam for the drive out there and back. It was a real treat not having to operate pedals after the race.

For a while now, Daniel, Mark, Marcia and I have been training for the Oxfam Trailwalker, a 100km walk to be completed in 48 hours(!). We have a target of $1000 to raise between the four of us, and just as with the walk itself, there is still have a long way to go.

If you are willing and able to give, please do so at our online donation page.

Much appreciated.

Honestly, what the fuck?

Subject: Agreed format for <thing> – final and agreed with <guy>
Body:
…
The format of this document is draft only.
…

I drafted a fairly long and boring post about this, but it boils down to this:

1. I’m planning on attempting the Gold Coast Marathon in July this year; and
2. I’m announcing it here in order to make myself commit to it.

Wish me luck.