5k walk

I went for a 5k fast walk around the lake at lunchtime with 2 of my workmates. It was a wee bit chilly when we first stepped outside, but we warmed up pretty quickly. My heart rate stayed around 120-128 bpm for most of the walk. That means I can only go the equivalent of 10-20 beats per minute faster before I reach my exercise limit!

It was nice though to get out during lunch again.

Adventures in cake making

At work, we always go a little over the top for people’s birthdays. I made this cake for one of the guy’s birthdays – complete with matchbox cars.


I also did this for one of the girls who hates cats.



It’s a lot of fun, and makes a birthday a bit more special. When one girl got married, the other “cake maker” did a cake that resembled a couch, and printed out a picture of the girl getting married from her hen’s night slumped in a couch looking very drunk (but cut just her out), so it looked like was slumped in the couch cake.

I had a triathlon cake for my birthday, with a running track, complete with pipe cleaner people running and cycling (on a pipe cleaner bike), and a “pool” in the middle of the cake.

Now I’m on cake making duties again on Friday for one of the girls. She’s got 4 kids, so I was thinking of a bus/car cake with lots of little kiddie faces hanging out of the car, but it all seems a bit hard. Anyone got any clever ideas for novelty cakes, or an easy way to make a car cake?? Google wasn’t much help :-(

Noosa triathlon

Well. The Noosa triathlon (1.5k swim, 40k ride, 10k run) is only 10 weekends away. I have a free entry for Noosa. I've done Noosa the last 2 years and loved it. I have a number of friends from my club going again. I have been told I potentially have a condition called Familial Aortic Aneurysm, and to keep my heart rate under 140 during any sort of exercise to lower the risk of my heart exploding (ok, a little dramatic, but it IS life threatening if I have it, and I do have an aneurysm). Because of this, I've been a little too freaked out to exercise too much, and also a little busy with getting married, possibly moving to America etc etc.

So I'm unfit. But I love the Noosa race. I can handle the swim pretty easily I reckon. I'll go do a 40k ride this weekend and see how I go. If that's ok, I'll aim to do a 10k walk on Sunday. If I can get through all that I'll speak to my cardiologist and see what he thinks.

I don't care if I do the race and go REALLY slowly - I just want to do it!!

Wedding photos

The rest of the professional wedding photos taken by Andrew Sawatske of Hi-tide photography are now up here.

The photographer did an awesome job, there's of photos with interesting backgrounds, a great range of different photo styles, as in black and white, sepia toned, half black and white, half coloured, funky blurring and other such exciting features :)

Very happy with them!!

Walk after work

Andrew and I went for a nice walk after work today. We went for a nice stroll around the paths near home, and just went out for 30 minutes searching for kangaroos.

A lady walking a sheepdog was not far away from us, so the doggy possibly scared all the kangaroos away as we only saw a couple.

It was nice to go for a stroll together after work rather than sitting on our asses in front of the tv! I did discover that my foot's still a bit sore after my cramps in the pool last night!! How bizarre... :-)

I SWAM!!

I went along to the Bilbys swim squad last night for the first time in about 6 months probably and loved it! I thought I'd drown, feel like a brick and wouldn't be able to swim more than 100m without stopping. It's been that long since I swam I was dreading going back!!

I swam about 2.3k (got a foot cramp that wouldn't go away for a while, and had to get out a bit early to get to a committee meeting, so missed about 500m in total), which is more than I expected, and I wasn't feeling too bad in the water. We did a set that included a 300m, and while my stroke was ugly, and my arms were heavy from being unfit, I managed it fine.

I definitely think I could have done the entire session without too much of a hassle. I was only in the slow lane, so the pace wasn't terribly fast, but of the 5 of us in that lane, I was the second person, and definitely faster than the 3 behind me, so that was good for the confidence!

I'm in a great mood today because of it as well, it was just what I needed, and I realised how much I enjoy swimming!

Today is beautiful and I brought my walking gear in today, but didn't get to go at lunchtime because I had lunch with a friend, so will go after work instead.

Bridge or implant??

Ahhhh so many tooth dramas.... All the wisdom teeth need to come out, and that'll probably happen in the next 6-8 weeks.

I also have a false tooth which is on a denture type thing, which I remove daily to clean. It's also only supposed to last upto about 5 years, and it's now about 9 years old....

So I'm looking at more permanent options. The dentist said my options are either a bridge or an implant. The dentist is pushing for a bridge where they file down the two teeth next to the missing one, and use them as "anchors" and make a false tooth which attaches to two caps that cover the filed down teeth. Mmmm filed down teeth...

Second option is to get a tooth implant. They put a titanium rod into your mouth which attaches to the jawbone, and once it all heals up, they attach a tooth to the rod. Eww.

Neither option sounds particularly appealing, and the dentist pushes the bridge (which he does so gets the money for....) whereas Andrew thinks the whole filing down the teeth thing is pretty permanent for those teeth, and why ruin them??

Has anyone else had a missing tooth they've had to replace? I'd love to hear people's thoughts to help with my decision!

Geek test

Good news - I just got out of the "Computer Illiterate" category, but unfortunately I am in the tech support nightmare category. Andrew will be so disappointed in me. :-)

And to top it off, I stuffed up the HTML code the first time I tried to post this... heh

Now Sarah Pollock

Woohoo, I'm now officially Sarah Pollock on my blog. There's no real point to this blog entry except that I'm trying to improve my Google juice :D

My old name is everywhere on triathlon results, so will have to actually do some more races now so anyone who googles for me thinks I'm actually fit ;-)

Crappy mood today

Nothing worse than having a crappy day, going to bed, and having a good sleep, but still waking up in a crappy mood. Got nothing exciting planned for the weekend either, so nothing to look forward to. Woe is me. :-)

Lucky it's nearly morning tea time!

Australian Idol

Ok, so I don't usually care about Australian Idol, but I've been watching it and there is someone I can't stand.

Jeremy Bourke. He's acted like a loser in everything they've had, his voice is crap, in the group thingy he sulked, didn't listen to his team mates and stuffed up his words because he refused to practise.

He has absolutely nothing going for him, and yet the judges love him!!!! Kick his ass out I reckon.

People I do like are Ben Worthington (oh my lord, I know their names...) who's the big blonde guy with the great baritone happening, Milly who has a really interesting look and a great voice, and the guy with the piercings who has heaps of energy, he's got personality and a fun attitude. There was a girl whose name I didn't catch who had darker features and sung beautifully.

I reckon they have a pretty decent group this time around and I might actually watch it. It's good to see they have the right look as well as the talent!

I'm really glad that sulky chick who had the sore throat got kicked out. She was such a whiny pain in the ass!

Wisdom teeth

I got an x-ray today to check my wisdom teeth as the dentist said they're impacted and will need removing.

So, got the x-ray and the bottom wisdom are completely SIDEWAYS! I thought they'd be angled, but I didn't realise they could be completely sideways like that.

So looks as though I'll be getting the bottom ones out pretty soon. I'm such a wimp, and I've heard so many horror stories about wisdom teeth removal.

Oh well, should be much better afterwards!

Bridge to Brisbane 7 August

We were up in Brisbane for my brother in law's wedding which was on the Saturday night, and Andrew had to head home early on Sunday so I was pondering what to do on sunday morning.

My mum mentioned on Friday that she was volunteering for the Bridge to Brisbane, so I figured if I could pop in to the race office and enter and find a way to get to the race I'd do it.

We were driving almost right past the office on Saturday, so I raced in, entered the 4.5k and mum said I could borrow her car, and she'd get her partner to drive her in to the race. Woohoo!

It was just such a nice day Saturday I knew I'd be silly not to do it. I would have liked to walk the 12k, but I had to get Andrew to the airport by about 7am, and I really didn't want to have to get up really early the morning after the wedding given we had to get up at 4:30am on the Saturday to get the plane from Canberra to Brisbane!

I planned to walk the entire thing, but the gun went off, and I eventually made it to the starting mat (there were heaps of people there!!), and decided to jog for a bit. I knew I was supposed to keep my heart rate under 140, so just took it easy, but as I'm very unfit my heart rate just wouldn't settle down and stayed up at the 160-170 mark.

I decided it wasn't worth it, and just slowed to a fast walk, and enjoyed the atmosphere and the weather.

Had a great day and finished it in 43 minutes or so. Yay me... :-)

SNOW!

It's snowing!! Here in Canberra! How funny!

I mean it's not really settling on the ground, but it's definitely snow! They're only snow flurries that last 5-10 minutes, but we've probably had 7 or 8 flurries throughout the day so far.

I'm going to head home soon so I can go and stand in it and be excited. I'll try to get a pic if I can. :-)

Hmmmm.... I hope our bulbs are ok!

Another wedding pic

This one's pretty cool!