Heartbreak Hill

Something that I didn’t mention at the time was that Sydney recently hosted, the City 2 Surf. This is the annual race where thousands of people from all over Australia come to run through Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. The route is about 14k’s long and goes from, well, the city to the surf really. It starts off at the intersection of William, Park and College Streets in the city and finishes up in Bondi just short of the Bondi Beach Pavilion. This year it seemed like half the country woke up early to be part of the race as either a participant or a spectator. There was a record number of entrants at over 63,000 people, which is a lot for Sydney, and I hear Bondi was packed. I actually wasn’t there though. I was part of the other half of Australia that Sunday and I woke up late with a hangover.

I was out the night before celebrating the imminent departure of two of the Bring Your Own Beef Crew*. Or that was celebrating their presence while I still could as they were about to depart for their new adventure in Melbourne. Many of us were partaking of pints or other measurements of alcohol served by that fine establishment, the Lord Nelson and it was a fun night. It would have in no way prepared me however for ‘Heartbreak Hill’, a notorious stretch of the race route which would be a breeze if only you were travelling in the opposite direction. Unfortunately though, for the less than extremely fit, it has been most aptly named. Now this has absolutely nothing to do with the price of fish of course but it somehow got me thinking – can anything truly prepare you for Heartbreak Hill? At least in a figurative sense?

In my more cynical moments I start to wonder if I’ll ever really find myself in a serious relationship that doesn’t end in heartbreak. And I’m not whinging ‘poor me’ here, more questioning why it could actually work without said heartbreak. I know it does of course but still, sometimes I wonder if I could live with one guy for the rest of my life. Maybe I hear too much living with five boys and need to remember that girls are not so innocent either when we get together. Maybe I see too much as well. I mean as much as I’m rather amused that ‘Dick Masterson’ obviously read (at least two sentences on) another entry, and I happen to find parts of his site quite funny, I can’t really imagine wanting to spend more than about 10 minutes with him or any of the people who take him seriously. But I’m sure that’s not really a problem because I assume at least, the sentiment would be totally reciprocated.

So occasionally, faced with members of the male sex that I don’t understand, I am left pondering just what sort of person could possibly turn out to be ‘the one’. Or in other words, who could I put up with and who could put up with me. By and large I’m sure this is a reasonably pointless exercise. No one gets to plan out their life to that extent (and if they do, they’re probably not very happy with it anyway). Occasionally though (and unfortunately sometimes), I don’t come up with something better to do with my time and I figured the net was as good a place as any to publicise some insignificant thoughts on the topic.

*This is literally ‘BYOBeef’ as a group of us get together every Sunday for a BBQ dinner and we provide our own meat.