It is late on day seven but as they say in the classics, better late than pregnant. This is number seven of the Seven Things I plan on getting a grip on in 2012.

I’m currently sitting in the bush on holiday, the first one in a long long time. Due to time constraints (which is ironic) I won’t be able to elaborate fully on number seven right now but as soon as I get back into civilisation on the weekend I will run you through exactly what I plan to do.

Number Seven on the list is for me to get way better at managing my time. We each have the same amount of minutes in the day and it amazes me how much better some are at managing it than others. All that needs to be said is time management is not one of my strong points. In 2012 that is all going to change.

The Ironman run route in Port Elizabeth is a three lapper and there are parts of the 14km lap that are lined with hundreds of screaming spectators but there is one stretch of the route that is really quiet and lonely. The route takes you out through the university’s campus and then onto the stretch of road that heads back to where all the action is. I read something in the build up about that stretch that said if you’re not 100% sure of why you were putting yourself through this before you started that part of the course for the second time you were in for a long evening.

I started my run pretty well but by the time I hit the campus first time round I was feeling really flat. I walked a large part of that stretch and my mind was racing. All sorts of things were going through my head. Most of which I can’t repeat but what concerned me most was that I was feeling that way already and I was only on my first lap. With 32km’s of the run to go it was not a great place to be.

There is absolutely no one on that stretch of road. I walked most of that stretch first time round. In the distance I could see a lone spectator. As I got closer I noticed she was clapping for each runner as they passed. It took a while for me to get to her as I was walking pretty slowly but as I reached her she looked at me, clapped and said “Well done Brad. Keep going. Your mom is really proud of you”. I don’t know who she was or where she came from and I never saw her again on the day but at that point that was all I needed to hear. It was those 12 words that got me going again and to the finish. Whoever you were, thank you.

I love simple but innovative ideas that make a difference in other people’s lives. You may or may not know about my involvement with the PinkDrive and my passion for raising money for their education and early detection programs through endurance events that I am taking part in like Ironman and the Comrades Marathon but I often feel like I am always begging my mates to open their wallets and support the next wacky event that I am taking part in. I came across an initiative this morning that I absolutely love and hence this post.

Roxy Burger

I follow Roxy Burger (Currently of Survivor Maldives fame) on Twitter and saw a couple of her tweets this morning with a hash tag that read #40daysofzams and it kind of aligned itself into the way I was thinking the last or two any way. Not being that religious I have never been one to get give up things for lent. Although at my dik former self it might have been said that I had given up my neck for a long long time. Listening to the radio yesterday afternoon in the car with my 8 year old son Ethan there was a conversation about lent and what people were going to give up. Ethan was asking a few questions about it and asked if he could give something up. I told him it had to be something he really liked, he thought about it for a while and then asked if he could give up school for 40 days. I nearly crashed my car. He definitely takes after his dad. I said to him we would find something we could do. Then I saw Roxy’s tweet this morning.

Ham & Cheese Zarmie

Forty days of zarmies. What a cool idea. The basic idea is this: Make a sandwich every day for 40 days, find someone who needs it and give it to them. It doesn’t have to be a gourmet zarmie, it can be as simple as a jam sandwich. It’s as easy as that! Honestly, such a simple concept but if we can get a thousand people to do it, we’ll be able to feed a thousand people a day. That is 40 000 sandwiches handed out in just over a month! Small idea, massive results! There are thousands of people roaming the streets of this beautiful country of ours that are hungry and I love that an idea this small can make such a big difference. By taking part you don’t need to fork out hundreds of bucks, you don’t need to spend hours of your time all you need to do is make one sarmie a day for forty days.

It is so easy to do. You might make yourself a lunch every day for work, just make an extra sandwich, whack it in a sandwich bag and on your way to work give it to the mother who is begging at the traffic light just around the corner from home. If you’re a mom who makes school lunches, make an extra one and get the kids involved. This is my challenge to you. Get involved. For forty days let’s see how many people we can feed. Post a comment at the end of this post to let me know if you’re in. If you’re on Twitter you can also drop Roxy or myself a tweet to let us know you’re in and how the #40daysofzams is going (don’t forget to use the hashtag in your tweets!). Share this post and challenge your mates to do the same!

I was tweeting away tonight as I tend to do and all of a sudden I start getting forbidden messages. I thought for a moment I may have been blocked. After digging a bit, it turns out Twitter has suspended Ubertwitter for privacy violations. This was the statement issued by the Twitter help centre tonight:

Regardless of how you access Twitter, we are dedicated to making Twitter better, faster and more reliable for you. As part of this effort, we ask applications that work with Twitter to abide by a simple set of rules that we believe are in the interests of our users, and the health and vitality of the Twitter platform as a whole. We often take actions to enforce these rules.

We have suspended UberTwitter and twidroyd for violating our policies.

Every day, we suspend hundreds of applications that are in violation of our policies. Generally, these apps are used by a small number of users. We are taking the unusual step of sharing this with you because today’s suspension may affect a larger number of users.

We are committed to helping you continue to use Twitter during the disruption of these applications. You can download Twitter for Blackberry, Twitter for Android and other official Twitter apps here. You can also try our mobile web site or apps from other third-party developers.

I never mentioned it to anyone, except my wife, but the story just got a whole lot funnier so I thought I would share.

I just got back from the Kruger Park on the weekend after a 10 day holiday with the family. I managed to get a couple of runs in while I was there (in the camp of course – you couldn’t pay me enough to run in the park on my own). As always I used my Garmin 310XT on my training sessions to monitor my session. After what was supposed to be my second last run in the bush I hit the showers. We were camping so the ablutions were obviously communal.

The day we were scheduled to head home I wanted to go for one last run. I couldn’t find my 310 though. It was absolutely nowhere to be found. We literally packed everything up and didn’t come across it. I then retraced my steps to when I last used it and remembered the shower. I could clearly remember taking it off in the shower, putting it on the window ledge and thinking to myself “do not leave it there when you’re done”. I obviously had. I was sick to my stomach. I went back and it was gone. I asked the cleaners if they had seen it and they all said they hadn’t. I sent my son up to reception to see if anyone had handed it in. Once again to no avail. I was feeling more and more down. I love my 310 and I couldn’t imagine training without the damn thing.

As we were about to leave the camp site after packing everything up a gentleman arrived on a golf cart. In his hand was my 310. I nearly kissed him. Really. It actually crossed my mind because I was so happy. He was from housekeeping and said that one of his guys had found it in the shower and handed it in. I was so relieved having had it returned.

Its a great story of honesty and integrity triumphing over evil. It would have been so easy for whoever found it to try and sell it off and make a little bit of extra cash.

The saga continued today though when I dumped all the info onto Garmin Connect from my recent travels. I have been away on and off for the last month and haven’t had time to dump the data. I was looking at some of the training I had done on my travels. The run along the promenade in Cape Town with my best mate James. The workouts I did in Nelspruit and Witbank. Going through the data from my trip to Kruger I noticed a workout of over 3 hours. I found that strange as I am still nursing my itb and I only ran while I was in the Kruger. But I definitely didn’t run for more than 3 hours. So I opened up the workout for a closer look. Turns out who ever found it decided to try it out before they handed it in to housekeeping.

Below is the workout as I found it on Garmin Connect

I was so looking forward to the Spar Lantern 10km night race last night. It was rated as one of the best 10km races in the country last year. I wanted to take part as I had heard that it was well organised and the atmosphere was amazing with the entire route lit up by lanterns. After last nights race I have no idea why it was rated so highly.

I think why it was so bad last night was mostly because of Read more…