Run 37:00 [2] 6.3 km (5:52 / km)
Darwin to Melbourne is a long haul, and it's a longer haul when done via Sydney. When done (partially) in daylight, though, there's some good scenery to be had, notably the rugged sandstone gorge country inland from the NT Gulf of Carpentaria coast - very interesting-looking, and no doubt utterly inaccessible except by helicopter. (I got a small taste on the 2009 trip).
Certainly knew today I'd been in a race and had a few other misadventures. The scoreboard of bits that were hurting read: one left elbow (cause: last Wednesday's altercation outside Crown Casino, although normally altercations outside Crown involve bouncers and not trees); bruised/grazed areas on the left thigh (same area as in Switzerland), right shin and right hand (cause: all from a fall coming into 13 yesterday), and a stiff neck and two sore shoulders (cause: your guess is as good as mine).
Normally I'd have loosened all this up in the water but that isn't an option until I get the stitches out of my elbow later this week (not that two sore shoulders would have been ideal for swimming), so the Monday night run from Ilka's was the place where it happened. A slow-paced run in which I was the token bloke. Started to loosen up a bit as the run went on, which means it did its job.
Ilka seemed a bit surprised when told that a picture of a past Australian orienteering champion was hanging on her wall. (The thing hanging on the wall was the Bureau calendar, which this month includes a picture of three of the Bureau's tsunami researchers, one of whom is 1981 W14 winner Diana Greenslade; my intermittent suggestions of a comeback have fallen on deaf ears).