Posted on 2008-08-13 21:00:00, modified on 2008-09-02 13:00:00
Tags: Sports
Last Sunday I walked, together with Dirk in his stroller, the yearly Sydney City to Surf fun-run. It's a fourteen kilometer track through the city and except for the "Heartbreak Hill" it's a nice track.
There were 70 thousand other people in it and all, except one guy who died of a heart attack 200 meters away of the finish, had a good time.
In previous years they took an average starting time and your exact finishing time, subtracted that and that is your time. So it was possible two years ago that Naomi and Dirk finished half an hour ahead of me: My official starting time was half an hour before theirs, but I walked with them. Needless to say that it didn't make me happy.
This year they had automated the time-tracking mechanism with RFID tags. So finally my real time, about two hours and thirty minutes, would be shown to the world! Justice at last! Except euhm... yes, computers are involved...
The run started at 09:00 with the professional people running and it wasn't until 10:00 that I finally crossed the starting line. And I finished at 12:40. Two hours fourty minutes, that's because Dirkie wanted to have an ice-cream and we had some trouble with him falling out of the stroller (only his pride got hurt).
According to the official results, I came in on place 53564 at 222 minutes and 21 seconds. That is three hours and fourty minutes. What!??!? So I compared it with numbers of other people I knew who ran: All between 70 and 90 minutes. So theirs is correct!
Looking through the results at people at place 55827, their time is 177 minutes 47. Their time is slower, and their rank is lower. That makes sense. What doesn't make sense is where my 60 minutes have gone! Tomorrow I'll give them a call to sort this slander out!
Update! The City2Surf people said that it happened because the tag wasn't scanned at the beginning. Yes, I got that idea. To err is human, to fully mess things up you need computers... The new time will be 162.21. I'm on my way to the blue starting group again!
Update! Got the certificate, it says.... 222:21 minutes! Oh man, let's go back to the 30 minute disqualitifaction because I started at the end of the yellow group..
Posted on 2007-10-05 09:00:00
Tags: Rant, Sports
Playing poker on top of a mountain? Playing poker under water? Playing poker in the freezing cold of Finland? Give me a break.
Poker games broadcasted on television is the most boring and useless filling of time. Nothing happens, nothing at all. Compare broadcasts of lawn bownling with broadcasts of poker and you would think that lawn bowling has the same excitement and entertainment value as soccer games have.
Extreme Lawn Bowling... Now that's something worth investigating (NOT)
Posted on 2006-01-20 21:00:25, modified on 2006-01-20 21:39:12
Tags: Rollerblading, Sports, Australia
Oh boy... and you thought that the Australian roads were unsafe for cyclists...
Short background: All my life (until I moved to Australia that is), I have been a fanatic ice-skater and rollerblader. In the winter on the frozen water, in the spring, summer and autumn on the road and bicycle tracks. And life was good :-)
Then I moved to Australia, where there is no frozen water nor bicycle tracks... In the first years, I used my bicycle to go everywhere (within reason). And got a lot of abuse from it from the car drivers. So much, that when my bike got stolen, I didn't bother to replace it, and walked everywhere. Yes, it took three times as long, but it was a million times less stressful.
Recently I found my backpack with my rollerblades in it. This weekend my wife and baby went to Canberra for a bridge contents (she, not the baby) and I thought "let's rooooooooolllllll.". Oh dear.
In the summer in the Netherlands, it is easily light till say 21:00 - 21:30. In the summer in Australia, it is barely light after 19:30 during the longest day. In the Netherlands, on the roads you have on constant distances street lights. In Australia, you have street lights on corners. Now the problem with rollerblading is that you go fast (unintentionally) and then a little bump in, or rock on, or gravel on, or whatever on the road has to be anticipated. Not seeing them is the same as asking to fall flat on your face.
In the Netherlands, in general, outside suburbs, the cars are not parked on the side of the road but in parking bays which are not part of the piece of the road where car drive. In Australia, roads are two-and-half-times as wide as a car and these cars are parked on the outsides of the cars. With the result that on the left hand side you have parked cars and on your right hand side you have cars driving. And since the favourite car of the Australian citizen seems to be a four-wheel-over-two-meters-high-landrover-tank, you have absolutely no idea what is happening on the at the car ports.
Last but not least, the Netherlands is flat and thus the roads are flat. Rollerblading there means: if you put effort in it, you go faster. If you don't put effort in it, you will go slower and slower until you're standing still. This might take some time, but it will happen. In Australia, even if you find a long stretch of road which looks flat, it's not. It's never flat, it's always sloping. So even if you don't put effort in it, you will go forward. And faster. So if you see something which might take some caution, you will go faster and faster to it, and faster and faster. Even a little stretch of say 30 meters will give you a nice speed when you're at the end (and not able to see what is going on on that road due to the stupidly high four wheel tanks).
So... first attempt to rollerblade again in Australia has turned out to be a huge disappointment. Tomorrow I'll try the road to Kurnell and see if I can figure out the four kilometer track in Miranda...
Posted on 2003-11-22 23:44:06, modified on 2006-01-09 16:29:21
Tags: Sports
Why Australia wouldn't win the 2003 Rugby World Championship.
It was all predictable:
So everybody who thought Australia would win because of the similarities in the history... If you forget history, you are forced to live it again!