The second long weekend. A soft sigh of space, with no kids’ soccer. The calendar, usually packed with matches one after another, felt briefly flat. It was delightful.
It started with a gentle Parkrun, where I ran into an old colleague. A nice surprise and a solid reminder of how small Canberra can feel in the best way. These kinds of incidental meetings seem more significant the older I get. With everyone being so busy, it’s hard to line things up. So when they just happen, unplanned and brief, it feels like a gift.
In place of the usual weekend matches, one of the coaches organised a parents versus kids soccer game. I joined. I played terribly. Truly terrible. But I laughed. There’s a special kind of joy in being bad at something. Embarrassing, yes. Fun? Absolutely. The match didn’t last long though. Icy rain swept in and we had to call it early. Honestly, I wasn’t too fussed.
Sunday was a highlight. A twelve kilometre long run in ice cold wind and light rain. These kinds of runs, cold, grey, often avoided by most, give me a quiet sense of pride. The path was empty. The mind steady. There is something noble in it, or at least I tell myself there is.
“I get to run in the cold,” I repeated like a mantra, remembering Deena Kastor’s Let Your Mind Run, which I was finishing while running. The book is not revolutionary, but it is kind. Sometimes kindness is what you need most. A reminder that your thoughts are your tools. That reframing is a quiet superpower.
After the run, and the most glorious hot shower, we all bundled up and headed to the Royal Canberra Poultry Show. A tradition now, since we went last year and had a great time. The kids loved it, but I may have loved it more. So many chickens. Chickens with wild hairdos. Chickens that looked like they ran a jazz club. Ducks, turkeys, and some bird I could not name, all squawking into the echoing hall. It is such a wholesome, noisy little wonderland. The kids were obsessed. I was too, to be honest.
The rest of the week drifted. A gym session. A few light runs. By midweek I had that dreaded throat tingle, the kind that whispers, you‘re getting sick, mate. So I shifted gears. Worked from home, enjoyed the peace, and accepted the slower pace. Fewer kilometres run, but not a total write off.
Music this week: a vinyl mix from Tomoki Tamura at Yoyaku Records. Deep, slow, timeless. It brought back dancefloors from the early two thousands. The good ones. The ones where no one had phones, only friends and good vibes. It also made me want to wear overalls. Maybe even use an old telephone as headphones. Just because.