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Olimpija Masters 2006

January 29th, 2006

Today a bunch of us retired swimmers (19 years and older) gathered for a competition that serves mainly for some ego boosting (woohooo, I still got it man!!) or ego destruction (I’m in worse shape than I thought!?). I guess I can count myself among those that went home in better mood than they arrived.

I did the 400m free in 4.51, which is 32s slower than my personal best. Yeah, I know it looks awful but it’s not as bad as it seems. I actually thought I was being rather optimistic when I said I’m aiming for a round 5.00:00, especially considering the fact I’ve been out of the water since the mini marathon back in September.

The same thing happened on 100m free. I was aiming for 1.01 but did it in 59.80 or 4.4s slower than my personal best. Not that great but better than I expected.

Swimming is not as easy as it used to be I’ll tell you that. That’s why most people just stick to short courses like 50 and 100m. You can pull off a decent result even without training. It’s a completely different story beyond that though. The 400m almost felt like torture and I began to question my sanity somewhere around the 200m point.

Good fun though, it’s nice to know what I’m capable of after all this time.

The end of Bayosphere

January 26th, 2006

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The bay area citizen media community Bayosphere comes to an early end after only a year in operation.
I won’t speculate what they should have done differently to make it work. Or if it even made sense.
Obviously it wasn’t as easy to get it going as they thought.

The Belgrade Run

January 25th, 2006

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…or Balkan Express…

I got the offer to drive down to Belgrade for a couple of days with just enough time to recharge my camera batteries and get some sleep. Just the way I like these things.

There really ain’t a lot to say to tell you the truth. It was a bit cold (but not that cold, between -9 and -15°C) with some snow thown in the mix. The wind did however prove to be somewhat of a problem after 6h walking around the city. A warm bed sure felt good.

Overall I wasn’t impressed as I had hoped. It wasn’t bad, far from it, I’m glad I went but I’ve got no desire to go down there again in the foreseeable future, if you know what I mean. It’s interesting but not that interesting.

The biggest surprise for me personally was just how safe the city feels, day or night. I never got the instinctive urge to keep my camera out of sight (except when a guard at the presidential palace told me to bug off and stop shooting for whatever reason he deemed valid).

PS anyone going to Belgrade simply has to extend the tour to other places in Serbia. Interesting sights are everywhere .