I thought this weekend is going to be horrible, but as it turns out, I got to the end of it feeling refreshed and happy! I haven't felt like this in awhile and it feels like I've been saved by someone.
This weekend is our church camp. I couldn't go because of the initial commitment I had to do a 10km fun run as part of the Australian Running Festival with a group of people that I hardly knew. If I knew that it was going to clash with the church camp, I would have given it a miss. It's a no-brainer decision really. Would I rather be running 10km with some random people or having fun at the beach with 20 of my close friends? It was definitely an obvious decision for Greg, he went ahead for camp without me.
But things seem to work out in the end. Greg's parents decided to stay over for 1 night on their way back home from New Zealand. My friend Liz is also staying over for a night on her way back to Sydney from her parents house in Tathra. Turns out that I was anything but lonely while Greg is away. My guest arrived on Friday night, and the next day at 3pm, it was time for me to meet up with the rest of my team mates to stretch our muscles and pull our minds towards a positive direction.
We have been slowly training for this event. My training had been a bit choppy because of my health and my stupid weak ankle. I never trained up to 10km, but I've been training regardless up to 7km. I find a lot of people are skeptical with the term "fun run" for this event, including me. But after experiencing the event first hand... it is actually kindda fun. The second they fired the gun, you're in the middle of hundreds of people running together, you have crowds on either side of you cheering like there's no tomorrow. Of course, we got sifted pretty quickly. The serious runners went way ahead and all the slower runners fell behind, but it doesn't mean that people stop cheering for you.
We had to run 3 and a half lap of this route. The moment I finished my first lap, some crazy dude had finished the whole run! That means this guy had run passed me 3 times and I didn't notice it. He did 10km in 30:52 minutes, which means he ran in the speed of 20km/hr... and now I'm just speechless....
I thought I was going to stop and start in this run, but I didn't! I ran the whole way through! As a very slow runner I thought my speed was going to be 1km for every 10 minutes, but I finished the run in 1 hour and 10 minutes, so in average I jogged 7km/hr. For a relatively long run, I'm quite happy with that number. I have definitely underestimated myself in this run, I really didn't know I had that in me!
100 meters to go, and I think it's time for me to pick up the pace a little. Having my in laws there at the end is priceless! They were so excited! Simon and Estelle had reached the end cheering as well. Crossing that finish line was definitely very satisfying! I immediately joined Simon and Estelle as we wait to cheer for Emilia. It was all smiles from then on. We all went to a pub together for a toast and a much needed team bonding session, then for dinner mum and dad took me out for dinner in my favorite restaurant near our house.
Emilia, me, Simon and Estle, jumping for joy jumping for joy with our medals!
The next day I woke up from a well deserved sleep in a lovely rainy Sunday morning- just the way I like it. Mum and dad left at 11am and I'm finally alone. Now it's time for me to do some work.... In my last post I mentioned a certain tip that I'm trying to apply in my Etsy shop that forced me to rearrange my plans. I was basically challenged to make my shop stand out among others by creating something that is unique. I realize that when I first opened up my Etsy shop in Oct 2008, I tend to view other people's product and get a feel of what sells and what doesn't- then based my design from there. It's not quite the opposite but now I have to look for what's unavailable in Etsy and make that. I assumed finding a gap in jewelry making is not so easy because most handmade artist in Etsy are jewelers. But on the contrary, I immediately knew what I had to make: wire wrap chokers.
Thus, I went to town with this idea in the past 2 weeks. Today I listed 4 chokers and 1 necklace on Etsy. It seems small, but it was very time consuming. Armed with a tripod, SLR camera, a mirror, and Sara Bareilles grooving on the background, I got trigger friendly experimenting pose after pose. I felt like I've nearly exhausted my wardrobe with all the different jewelry. Not surprisingly, after hundreds of photos I took today, only 28 lucky shots made it to Etsy today.
I decided to put photos of my face as the main photo of my chokers on purpose. I felt that photos of necklace or earrings can easily make sense without an actual model, but chokers are different. I need to see it being worn to know what it is otherwise it just look like a very small necklace- hence the sudden explosion of my face all over the shop.
Alright, it's almost 2am now and I'm falling asleep. It's time for me to do just that... somewhere else... a bed maybe.
Good night!
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