Date: 15 June
Distance: 5k
Time: 00:31.25

Traveling by air is a waiting game. Just sitting around and waiting … waiting for flights, waiting to board, waiting to take off, waiting for food, waiting to get an innings in the toilet, waiting to land, wait, wait, wait, is exhausting at best.

I am less and less keen on the thought of crossing borders, simply because border control is a real pain in the arse (plus I am a bit of a nervous flyer). The whole ordeal is stressful. But to see other places around the world and experience other cultures and environments means you have to suck it up. Alas, it doesn’t get any easier. On the contrary. But I do love traveling around, or touring, by foot or car or even train. Walking from place to place for months on end would be my first choice.

While in Perth for the Aussie science communicators conference where Gerry will be giving a talk, we decided to do some events and see a bit more of the parks in and around Perth on foot. The one event would be a parkrun the morning after we arrived (sounded easy enough), and the other the Transcend 40km walk on 22 June, all going to plan.

But often things don’t work out as planned. There will inevitably be hiccups. For instance, the second flight from Melbourne to Perth was delayed. No surprises there. What was already a very long day, starting shortly after 6am in NZ, and ended at 11:30pm in Perth (3:30am NZ time), was also somewhat eventful. Arriving later than planned in Perth, we discovered that the car rental company who delivers cars to the airport, doesn’t deliver after hours. Should have read the small print. We took an Uber to the car rental, and were dropped of in the dark at night to a deserted industrial area. I was suspicious of everything that moved and didn’t move. They were meant to send us details for after hours pickup, but somehow that email slipped through the cracks. After about twenty minutes of cussing and cursing in the dark in the middle of nowhere, Gerry searched his emails again, and luckily found the email containing the details about the lock box that held the car key. Crisis averted. And thank goodness for roaming. What did we do in the days before smartphones.

Arriving at our Airbnb accommodation after 10pm, where we had a room in a house shared with others, it turned out one of the other residents took our key from the, yet again, lock box outside the house that is used for self check-in. Again, cussing outside, we had no telephone number to contact the host, or anyone inside the house. The house looked dark and we thought that everyone was asleep and didn’t want to make a racket, but Gerry knocked anyway. Eventually one of the occupants, the lady who took our key, opened the door and handed us the key. It would appear she had some or other safety concern – I battled to understand what she was on about. Had we arrived even later, we might not have been able to get inside. But everything worked out in the end. A miss is as good as a mile, as my mum always told us.

And here’s a funny thing; when you fly from NZ to somewhere in Australia, via Melbourne, your luggage cannot be checked through from A to B. Melbourne airport rules dictate that you have to collect your luggage, go through customs, and check it in again for the local flight. Maybe it is the same for any international to local transfer. But for some reason NZ doesn’t know this. It is the second time this happened to us (I forgot we had been in this situation before). We very nearly went for coffee at the nearest cafe, thinking our luggage is checked through to Perth, while all along it was going round and round on the conveyer. Should I be telling anyone at NZ airports that this is the case?

And to top things off, Qantas must have left our luggage outside in the rain in Wellington, as when we opened the suitcases, everything was wet. So excuse me for having a wet panty about air travel and customs.

Exhausted, but finally in bed, we had a surprisingly good sleep. Short, but good.

Perth has a lot of parkruns (19 if I’m correct), and we had five to choose from all within an 11km radius from where we stayed. This one, following the John George Trail, looked the best from the online photos, so we made uncommitted plans to do it. Bearing in mind jetlag, super late to bed, and no food whatsoever with us, apart from a few bags of rooibos (red bush) tea, which made it through customs. And incase you think I’m a rooibos tea fanatic for bringing no other edibles than rooibos on this trip, it was by accident that I had it. Everything happened last minute (due to a hectic schedule, coupled with an inability to make decisions), when I grabbed the small back pack I use for work as my hand luggage bag, which happened to contain some rooibos tea bags in a small ziplock.

When we woke up at 6:30am I somehow didn’t feel too knackered, so we had tea, got dressed and went to the parkrun. The sun was out, no wind, and only slightly cool. But a t-shirt and vest was enough for me, while most of the other runners were in shorts and t-shirts only.

The welcomes and announcements were made (poking fun at the kiwis for being a bit slow? As an expat I’ve never been able to fully understand the banter between Australia and New Zealand) and we were set off. The course is sealed and in a lollipop out-and-back shape; about 2km out, a 1km loop, and 2km back on the same path.

I was hoping to make 30 minutes, so was going out at a pace just shy of 6min/km. Quicker than I have run in about a year. I can honestly not remember when was the last time I could manage a 6min/km pace. I was obviously running too fast, I knew that, let alone continuously for 5km. My muscles felt tight – like they might tighten up and not release again, sending me flying. For the first two kilometres, I lifted my feet extra high and concentrated extra hard to make my legs work. It did cross my mind for a fleeting moment that a longtime family ailment (unidentified and undiagnosed) had finally caught up with me. Both my sister and brother have this thing where their muscles would completely freeze whenever they try to do something repetitive quickly. Neither of them can run, or swim, or do any sport. By the second step they try to take, their muscles would just contract and not release, rendering them incapable to move. At a normal walking pace, they are fine. We’ve collectively self-diagnosed it as a form of the fainting goat syndrome (myotonia congenital), for lack of knowing what it is. We’ve jokingly said that my mother wrapped then up too tightly as babies. And by the time I came along, she was more relaxed about the newborn.

I managed 2 kilometres at a sub-6 minute pace, but then the wheels came of slightly. I covered the next two kilometres at just over a six minute pace, still on track for a 30 minute finish at a push, but in the last kilometre I was brought to a halt and had to walk for a bit.

I contemplated my situation. The last food I had was shortly after lift off from Melbourne, some 15 hours ago (felt like days ago), which likely had something to do with it. Coupled with jetlag, I just couldn’t make myself go faster.

But the scenery helped. The park is beautiful; the track next to the Swan River, with eucalyptus, oak, wattle trees with patches of green open spots. All along the run we were accompanied by the sound of moaning ravins and chatty green cockatoos. After a short slow walk, I could jog again to the finish, but obviously missed the 30 minute goal.

It was the 402nd running of the event, with 224 participants. There’s a cafe (which supply all the volunteers with free coffee), playground and more. It’s is a gorgeous parkrun. The locals must be thrilled to have it in such a beautiful place.