Tomorrow is the day

Tomorrow almost exactly one year after my first one, at the heinously early time of 7:15am I will take off in what will be my second half marathon race. When I did my first one at this time last year I did not think it would be a year until I would do another one. Nevertheless I plan to make up for lost time this year as I want to do at least six including tomorrow over the next year. After that I think I will feel ready to take on the ultimate goal of the Marathon, which going to plan may well be Melbourne 2008. Although a part of me would really like to do a famous overseas marathon as my first (London, New York, Paris maybe?). The big question for me at the moment is how will the foot hold up. I have seriously considered pulling out of the race over the past week or so given the lack of great improvement in the injury. However, I am confident I will last the distance having run 15 km on it last weekend and then really testing it at pace over a 1 km time trial during the week. It will be more of a matter of how much pain will it give me and how will it effect my form and my time. I will let you know tomorrow.

I realised the other day that the hordes of people who are regularly reading this blog have probably noticed the lack of photos lately. It's funny it hasn't been a conscious thing it just has happened that I haven't picked up the camera since Easter! Anyway, I've promised myself to take some random photos before and after the race tomorrow. I actually intended to take some photos at the party we went to last night but it has been so long since I used the camera that all my rechargeable batteries had gone flat!

Got into an aggravated discussion with my bro on Thursday night of which the end result was him hanging up on me. He has an issue with how I can slag off the G20 protesters for using violence on one hand and on the other condone the violent attacks by Greenpeace on the Japanese whaling boats. Despite the fact that he is clearly a whale hater, to me the difference between these two acts is fundamental. The G20 protesters were a bunch of kids, who anyone standing on the sidelines of the protest could clearly see were just out to create trouble and violence for the sake of it. It wasn't even clear what they were protesting at - the fact that they were too cowardly to even show their face, hiding behind costumes etc says a lot in my mind. They trashed the inner city area of Melbourne, destroyed a police car and terrorised inner city residents, what was the protest about again? Read more here.

Okay this brings me to the whales. Japan is conducted 'scientific' research by systematically hunting and killing whales in the Southern Ocean. Even if you truly believe any of this is for scientific research, this is not really the point. Greenpeace was peacefully protesting the hunting of these whales, when the Japanese mothership, the Nissin Maru, deliberately rammed the Greenpeace ship. Read more here. The Japanese then claimed Greenpeace was at fault! Lets also remember that the Nissin Maru is six times larger than the Artic Sunrise, the Greenpeace vessel it rammed. Are there any similaraties between the G20 protests and the whale hunts in the Southern Ocean? Well yes, unprovoked violence was used by the G20 protestors, and unprovoked violence was used by the Japanese. Case closed.