AT the City of Surf, your best bet is to make Hay while the sun shines.
If you’ve safely negotiated the incline on Malcolm Street heading towards Kings Park Road, which gives so many runners an unexpectedly savage welcome to the city’s biggest community event, then another bump up Thomas Street, you’ll almost manage to enjoy the Hay Street section.
On a beautiful day like Sunday put on for the record 40,000 participants in this year’s event, Subiaco is a pleasant little diversion on the road to pain that lies ahead.
Yet my greatest pain was not from the 12km event itself, despite that final 3km between Perry Lakes and City Beach making significant demands on any reserves of fitness.
It was denying myself a glass of wine with dinner the night before. Yep, that seemed like the greatest sacrifice I’d made all weekend. Which is, of course, a little scary.
I blame the wine glut, which has made my favourite tipple, riesling, so attractively priced I now have reserves to survive a Chilean mining disaster.
It doesn’t help that my ‘wine club’ knows how to press my buttons and personally calls to alert me when its profit results are looking like they might have the DTs.
In my defence, despite enjoying a regular intake of alcohol, it’s a modest amount.
But hey, this is a drug and drugs create dependence.
It would seem the Premier has no qualms about my habit. Pretty much condones it and promotes it.
If The Sunday Times is correct, the State Government is looking into fenced-off, designated licensed precincts along the foreshore where revellers can drink alcohol at the 2011 Australia Day Skyworks.
It saddens me if Mr Barnett feels the need to over-ride the Police Commissioner in his attempts to loosen the ties between having fun and indulging in alcohol.
A significant community event is the perfect opportunity to create an atmosphere based on simple togetherness in a beautiful environment without the need to indulge in our collective drug of choice.
It’s Sunday evening now and I must admit my body is asking me more questions than Julia Gillard’s climate change citizens’ assembly. I’ve had an afternoon kip (I’m sure marathon guns Chelimo Kipkemboi and Kennedy Kiproo have too). Yet I’m already contemplating (though ultimately rejecting) a cold beer or a warm red.
The City to Surf has the virtue of aiding the work of Jolimont organisation Activ in providing services and support to people with disabilities.
If anything, we should ask Skyworks attendees to give the equivalent amount they would have spent on booze to organisations that help people with serious drug habits to get themselves together.
People like me?