14 weeks of Orange

My blood has been turning orange. The more I run, the more orange it gets. Don’t worry, this is not some kind of new-age jaundice; it’s the result of a long running affiliation with an organisation called Cantoo.

For the last few years I’ve had a bad case of “fun run fever”. I’ve done countless events in Melbourne and Sydney including mini triathlons, 14km runs, 10km runs and even a half marathon (21.5km). It’s been quite a learning curve; my vocabulary has expanded to include phrases like ‘negative splitting’, ‘dynamic stretching’, ‘foot strike’ and ‘cadence’. I’ve learned how to deal with shin splints and other running related injuries. I even have an entire arsenal of mental tricks to motivate myself up a hill. (My favourite is the chant “hills are great, loosing weight! Hills are fun, Smaller bum”)

How did this running addiction start you may wonder? It all began when I signed up for a program with Cantoo.

Cantoo is the main fundraising arm of Cure Cancer Australia. As suggested by their slogan, “fun, fitness and fundraising!”, Cantoo provides professional training in either RUNNING or SWIMMING and in return participants fundraise for Cure Cancer Australia. Since its inception in 2005 cantoo has raised over $9.5M dollars and sponsored 71 researchers. Soon they’ll be cracking the $10M mark!

The researchers sponsored by Cantoo are real Australians - I know because I’ve MET some of them. A month ago I had the pleasure of touring the Walter+ Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) Institute affiliated with the Royal Melbourne Hospital and The University of Melbourne. The researchers I met were incredibly grateful for the opportunity given to them by Cure Cancer Australia. They are all such talented people doing wonderful things for the advancement of cancer research.

Just recently one of the Melbourne researchers, Dr Megan Bywater and her researcher team have announced a fundamental blood cancer breakthrough – this is great news for Australians with leukaemia and lymphoma. Click here for more info on Megan’s breakthrough.

This year marks the 4^th year I have done the Cantoo program. I am currently the team captain of a group of 20 people who have signed up to do a half marathon in October. This group is a mix of guys and girls ages 25-50 and I couldn’t be prouder of them all. They get to listen to me clap and cheer encouragement like a demented cheerleader as they drag themselves to Saturday morning training rail hail or shine.

I’d be super grateful if anyone will sponsor me.This is the link to my fundraising page:

http://cantoogreatoceanroad2013.gofundraise.com.au/page/vguy

Please get in touch if anyone is interested in doing a program with Cantoo. It’s such a great way to meet people, get fit and be part of a good cause. You won’t regret going orange!

Brisbane to Melbourne in a ute

When my chiropractor asked me what I was doing on the weekend, he probably expected the standard response of  “oh, not much; drinks on Friday, a few coffee catch-ups, brunch, that kind of thing.”

What he didn’t expect me to say was that I was flying to Brisbane to pick up a second hand ute and planned on driving it back to Melbourne. When I told him that was what I was doing, he looked a bit shocked for a minute then very delicately said “I don’t presume to know you that well Victoria, but you don’t strike me as the ute driving kind of girl.”

I laughed, not offended in the slightest. He was right; I’m not, well, the ute driving kind of girl. Or I wasn’t until last weekend when I drove 1700km from Brisbane to Melbourne in 2 days.

When I first signed up to this adventure I naively thought that it wouldn’t take very long. 20 hours according to google maps, that’s not sooooo bad right? Well, for those of you who don’t know, Australia is MASSIVE! Driving between Brisbane and Melbourne takes well over 20 hours, despite the fact that many roads are 110km/ph. Why Australia doesn’t have an autobahn like in Germany is beyond me.

In the interest of saving time, my driving partner Sam and I avoided the scenic route and took the Newell highway straight through the un-pretty parts of NSW and VIC. If we had the time I would have loved to go the coastal road, and stop off in Bryon Bay. Alas, our only real stop was in Dubbo overnight, and the only thing going on in Dubbo on a Saturday was bowling. After much consultation of the tourist pamphlet detailing the ‘Delights of Dubbo’, we chose to forgo bowling and instead go to bed early.

It’s wasn’t a trip of luxury that’s for sure. It rained some of the way so we had to pack as much as we could with us into the small chassis. Each bump sent my ribcage rattling. The suspension on the ute was so bad at times we felt like we were on safari – the difference between our experience and a real safari being that the only animals we saw on the side of the road were dead ones.

We didn’t have a cassette tape for the very retro audio system so were stuck with the radio. Sadly one of the crap things about travelling interstate is how often the triple J radio frequency changes. We spent a lot of time scanning the radio frequency to find a semi decent station. This was not helped by the fact that the ‘scan’ button kept dropping off and getting stuck.

Despite the boredom of the road, a cracked windshield, the sheer length of the trip, a gaseous episode and a tense manual driving lesson, Sam and I made it back to Melbourne in one piece WITHOUT AN ARGUMENT. You see we actually enjoyed it! 20 hours of driving can be hell, or it can be fun, depending on who you are with and the attitude you have.

There are much easier and more environmentally friendly ways to test a relationship. Like going bowling, I guess, in Dubbo.

Red red wine

God I love red wine. Especially when it is raining.

White wine is nice too, but it doesn’t quite live up to red. Red is fuller somehow. More comforting.

The first sip is a tangy smoothness on my tongue. Another sip warms my cheek bones.  Sip three and my shoulders loosen.

 

Wine dispels my anxiety.  After years of drinking red wine with dinner I’ve come to associate it with safety, with peace. Should I be concerned with this reaction? Refraining from intoxication is one of the five Buddhist precepts. But I’m not talk about intoxication. I’m talking about dulling my senses, in a controlled way of course.

Surely I’m not alone here. Mankind has been enjoying wine for over 8000 years. I hear the romans were fond of their wine, in fact both the Greeks and Roman’s worshipped a wine god (Dionysus and Bacchus respectively). Wine is also used in the Christian Eucharist ceremonies and the Jewish Kiddush. While I don’t believe I am actually drinking the blood of Christ when I sip a merlot, I do appreciate the power of the symbolism.

Australia, my land of origin, produces some beautiful wines. We can boast the Borossa Valley, Margaret River, Mornington Peninsula, Hunter Valley and even Tasmanian wine regions. Sadly we are known internationally for some of our cheaper wines (think Jacob’s creek and yellow tail), but don’t let them cloud your judgment! Good ‘ol Grange can compete with the world heavy weights.

A few weeks ago I had the very great pleasure of going to the Yarra Valley on a wine tour. It was one of those organised tours where a bus picks you up from your accommodation and you are grouped with 6 or so randoms for a day of getting boozed. Everyone starts out a little shy at first, but by 4pm you are guaranteed to be getting along like a house on fire.

 

 I tasted my first wine of the day, a sparkling at Chandon, around 11am. I did contemplate spitting it out in the tasting bucket provided but honestly it just seemed wasteful to do so. In the spirit of "not being wasteful" I spent the entire day sipping on over 20 different wines at 6 different wineries. It turns out that when I get tipsy I get purchase happy, so I now have many bottles of souvenirs from this wine tour. Just think of how much money I 'saved' buying direct from the cellar door...

Call me a snob but I wont drink red wine out of a bag. Now a screw top on the other hand, I would drink out of any day. While a cork is certainly romantic it can often ruin the wine drinking experience; whether it is just stopping you from ready access, breaking into stubborn crumbly pieces or fouling the wine. But try arguing that with a French person.

I’ve heard some say that wine should be drunk slightly chilled, because the ‘room temperature’ of the 1600s was a lot colder than it is now. Some people go over the top in chilling their white wine however – you don’t want it to be so cold that you can’t feel anything but a chill on your tongue. Ice-cream headache!

Musing about wine is fun, but drinking it is much more fun. Have a sip and remember you are sharing in an age old tradition.