Karen and Kate's journey to Ironman and beyond

Someone has recently tried to convince me that there is something of merit about participating in ball sports.  The opinion was that it is possible with a bit of hard work for anyone, even me, to be taught the art of being cruel to poor defenseless spherical objects. Something I am sorry but I have to dispute. One reason I do long slow endurance sports is because I don't have to think or act fast, well, most of the time.  Of course there are exceptions, for example when you are about to leave the vertical plane on a bike, or make inconvenient contact with an unexpectedly placed tree branch, fellow athlete or large hole in the ground. Most of the time however, as a sloooow distance athlete you can take a less aggressive approach to decision making.  You can pause, think a bit, pass on instructions in a leisurely fashion from an endorphin stupefied brain to the rest of the body, then like a great and stately ocean liner, gradually come to a halt. As an endurance runner I also don&#

What an amazing day Saturday was for the Rotorua Half Ironman.  The weather forecast was a bit dodgy, showers and some wind predicted.  It turned out to be perfect conditions however, to the point where sunburn was more of a problem than the wet and cold. So Kate had said lets do the early start option.  This was an 5.45 am start being offered to those who had a history of taking more than 7 hours to complete the course.  A smart idea to cut down the mop up of stragglers coming through the bush hours after the event has been wound up, but also it was pointed out that it can be lonely on the trail still finishing off your 21 km if nearly everyone else has gone home. I for one did not regret getting going that 45 minutes earlier one bit, in fact it was a fabulous change which I hope they repeat. So we had a 4 am breakfast, put the bikes in Kate's car, and headed off into what still seemed very much like night.  It was so dark Kate was driving along and she said "I'm sure

Another unexpected trip to Wellington, fortunately, taper week, no worries (well, I'm not worried) about doing very little.  I did get out for a run however, and got pleasantly directionally challenged among all of those back streets. It was raining.  I now see why there are so many pedestrian crossing signals at all the intersections, they are to hang onto in the wind to stop foolish runners getting blown into the traffic. Over 6 km, I felt a bit odd pounding up and down city streets dodging in and out of the serious-suited-ones.  Perhaps they felt even more odd when confronted with a large self propelling object in fluorescent green ducking and diving in their midst. Anyway, Rotorua half IM is now just two sleeps away.  Kate has convinced me (well, she has the vehicle), that we need to do the early start which the organisers are kindly offering this year to anyone expecting to do over 7 hours.  The idea is that we don't get lonely out in the bush by ourselves at the back

It is a whole week since we cycled around that big hole in the ground a wee way down country again, that was time number eight.  I remember the first time, we thought a 60 km ride was enough training, that the measly little hills out the back of Whitford were real hills and that hanging onto a convenient powerpole or fencepost was the accepted way to stop to get cleats out of pedals. We did however learn the errors of that sort of thinking with a 10+ hour effort on the road that year, probably the big surprise is that we kept going back every November. Things have come a long way, some rides are easier than others, well, actually they are all hard, some have just been harder than others.  This one for me was strangely eough a good one, it was windy, cold, and rained on and off, but I didn't have that "oh I wish this was over" feeling starting at the foot of the first hill and keeping going till the end.  Why, who knows?  Why does one event work better than another when

Just had an unscheduled trip to Wellington for a meeting.  Oh dear, the training plan said I was meant to be cycling and swimming, but running shoes are ever the portable option so running it was.  Shoes and two sets of running clothes in the cabin luggage, I had more running gear with me than anything else for my one and a half days away. In the evening I headed off for my run, going down the long hill towards the harbour.  I wanted to get an idea of the distance to the mornings meeting venue and with my tendency to get lost, check out the route.  It was very windy, and I was wearing a light singlet and running tights which would have been absolutely fine if I hadn't stopped for what seemed to be dozens of traffic lights.  How do people run like that having to stop all the time?  Six km later it was getting dark and I was ready to return.  But I was hungry.  I saw lots of food places as I zigzagged up those confusing city streets, but nothing I wanted to really go into and risk

I thought I was a bit nuts signing up for the Standard distance triathlon at Maraetai beach yesterday, I mean I had run a marathon the week before and logic would say there should be some sort of impact. I felt fine however, and I figured that really I am meant to be fit given we plan on riding the 160km round the lake in two weeks time. So I turned up on Sunday morning and it was an absolutely stunningly beautiful day.  The sea was completely flat, the temperature was mild, there was only the slightest breeze and not a cloud in the sky.  All of my doubts disappeared, it would have been such a shame to not take on the course, and also not to challenge myself a little bit. There were no familiar faces, but when you struggle into a wetsuit you can usually find someone to zip you up and often start a conversation.  In this case with the family of a young woman, Amy, she was doing her first triathlon, the try-a-tri version. The hooter went, I hung back so as not to spend too much tim

This year I ended up, shall we say accidentally, with the Auckland marathon squashed into my annual programme, rather inconveniently between that ultra in Brisbane at the end of August, and the Taupo Cycle Challenge in November.  It only came up because the children wanted to run the kids marathon, I figured if I was going to be in town for that, why not tick Auckland off once and for all. But after an indifferent (inadequate?) training lead-up and a tough day on the road the Auckland marathon ended up a as something more than just a 'tick'. Starting with the trip into Devonport on a ferry straight from (almost) home. No driving for hours through all of Auckland, trying to find parking, hopping on another ferry etc, this was a case of driving 3km up the road, parking by the wharf, walking onto the boat and being at the start-line 25 minutes later.  Best of all though, sitting on the comfortable seat with my thermos of coffee, was seeing all of these faces familiar from all th

Anyone could be excused for thinking that the lack of activity on the blog means lack of activity full stop.  Well, no actually, quite the opposite.  Whangarei half marathon came and went, notable because of wet weather and the prevalence of cold induced 'goose bumps' on a large proportion of the under-dressed field. Hamilton half marathon was a day-trip with Kate and her dog on a lovely mild, overcast day where we pottered along on a pleasant undulating back-road course. Finally weekly training has gone from around 5 hours of running, up to a rather surprising 12 hours last week, but once you start putting in swimming and ever-increasing cycling miles the time mounts up quickly. Not that I am planning to stay at that level, even for Ironman, the complicating factor this time is that extra marathon right in the middle of preparation for the 160 km round Taupo cycle challenge then Rotorua half Ironman, usually at this point those events would be my main focus and I certainly wou

Bridge at Sunset - Photo from S Witherden - Wikimedia The Auckland Marathon  has been on my list of must-do-one-day events for years. In itself it held no particular appeal apart from allowing access to the pedestrian unfriendly but spectacular Auckland harbour bridge.  This event is in my back yard so to speak however a detractor was that getting to it at the right time was actually more complicated than for example getting on a plane and flying to another city altogether.  That relatively long early morning drive in from Maraetai to Auckland city central, finding parking, catching an early ferry to Devonport, running the race, and then getting home again seemed too much like hard work.  Running over the Auckland harbour bridge, yes very appealing, but there is time pressure to get over the bridge... pressure always puts me off. Descriptions of crowds and uneven road surfaces and under prepared athletes.... no thanks.  To top it off I have made a tradition in recent years of being

The run I had on the Sunday immediately after I got back from Australia was at the bottom of the enjoyment scale.  I had great company, but it was 8 km of heavy legs and low motivation and I felt like I had an anchor dragging behind as I plodded along even slower than I usually do.  It knocked my confidence, I forget that I was fit enough to run 50 km only days before, I only think about how hard running is and how tired my body feels and how I cant possibly be a runner.  Yesterday on Sunday, a week later, was much better. Sometimes it just takes a while to click back in to feeling on top of things. I ran 14 km with the Te Puru runners, sluggishly for the first 10 km, but then my legs started feeling like they knew what they were doing again and I could have just kept going. I made the sensible but hard decision to go home though as I had deliberately not had breakfast, and had only a little supply of water. Last week I also managed two short swims, these were 500 m and 1000 m in the

50 km, it is long way to run, but paradoxically it seems that my body didn't think it was as tough as an ordinary marathon. I was worried I wasn't ready, my overall training hours were a little lower than usual (average 5.5 hours/week over 8 weeks), even if my long runs were longer (6 runs of over 25 km in 8 weeks of training, 4 of these over 30 km with a peak of 37 km). I dreaded getting to the point at about 35 km when in a marathon I start to get really heavy and the run can devolve to brisk walk and brisk walk devolves to walk and it takes an immense effort to get back into a shuffle style run.  In this run, 40 km came and went and I was still feeling good, 45 km came and went too without problems. I was pretty kind to myself though and had been making sure I walked/ate/drank at each of the water stops (at 5 km making x 9 walks), or up the only hill in the whole course which was a moderate bridge (10 walks by itself as I covered it both ways x 5). I had worried about the

How did it happen...again?  Next week, my first ultra-marathon is next week!  Am I ready, well of course not.  I am never ready, never manage to complete a training programme as intended, never believe I can manage to stay completely healthy and injury free, never shake this feeling that I am not good enough, and I am sure that the day of the race (and every day before it) will be a complete disaster. I wont finish, oh goodness, perhaps I wont even start! Reality is that out of the now quite large number of pretty serious events that I have signed up for, I've never missed one.  There is also nothing to say that anything in the above attack pessimism is true, nothing to indicate that I wont have an absolute ball and achieve exactly what I want to on the day.  I have only ever had a couple of events where I didn't whole-heartedly enjoy them once I actually hit the road (or water). In only one (last years Rotorua Half Ironman) did I really think not finishing was an option, but

Oh those aching ankles, sore legs, grumbling away, paranoia growing, this could be a problem.  The internet said DOOM, my mind said "I will crumple into a miserable heap in Brisbane when my feet disintegrate" and L the Ironman who now does massage to repair damaged athletes said "inflammation, tight muscles" while I said OWWWWWWWW. "Put your legs in a bucket of cold water and keep training" he said.  Sigh. OW.  Both ankles. Usually when both sides are problematic it isn't so much a specific injury thing, its a temporary, overdone it, need a whole body rest.  When one side hurts, and keeps on hurting you know you most likely have a real injury.  But for me it was both ankles, the problem has been coming and going since the Rotorua marathon when it developed at 20 something km, pain starting on the inner ankle aspect above the bony bump, going down behind the bump and into the middle of each arch, especially sore on longer runs, I would get to the poin

In the weekly training plan from Garyth there is one day in particular that makes me shudder.  This is the day on the plan where a couple of small words appear, those words are 'hill repeats'.  These dreaded sessions start with a short warm-up run, (oh the temptation to just keep running away from the hill), then plod, plod, plod up the hill, and shuffle shuffle shuffle down, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat etc.  There was some suggestion that my tumble last week was a rather over-the-top way to get out of the hill repeats, it wasn't, but neither was I particularly sad to miss the nasty hill session planned for the next day. But it turns out there is actually a practical use for hill repeats. I wish I had realised this over the years I didn't run because my partner was on call for coastguard and I couldn't leave the house in case he had to go out, leaving the children. This week he is on call, aha, solution, do hill repeats!  So last night I ran up and down the

Less than 4 weeks to go to my first 50 km run.  That means my training is reaching the pointy end, what I do training-wise from now on will make not a whole lot of difference to performance on the day, but injuries and bugs may.  As far as injury goes, this is the point where I become accident prone.  Like last week when I climbed a low crash barrier at the side of the road, hooked my foot, and did an inelegant little dive-roll in the gravel.  Then I made the mistake of getting going again, and running the 5km home on adrenaline after which I was useless for days. That is one thing about being hypothyroid, there is not much I can't do if I work up gradually and take things easy, ie, sneak up on my fitness, but I have only got a certain amount of reserve and once I exceed my limits I need to recover. So 4 unplanned days were taken completely off but fortunately my energy was back and the bruises gone by Sunday which was just in time for my last really long run of 37 km. That is a

Events are one thing, you make a decision (hard part), make your booking and pay your entry fee so you cant easily back out. You then think about all the practical things, like if it is an 'away' event, where do you stay? For any event, is it cheap, clean, quiet, good basic amenities like a fridge and preferably microwave, good transport or parking? For a marathon, is it somewhere you can easily walk home to if you have left all of your energy on the road? Does the walk take you past somewhere you can grab some suitable food (I like ice-cream shops or smoothie shops like Tank), do you need to climb ten flights of stairs before you can collapse, is there a good shower?    For a bikeride, can you get the bikes into the room safely and still be able to move around, do you have to worry about getting chain grease on expensive white furnishings.  For a big triathlon like Ironman, well, more space needed definitely for the whanau and so you can move around and set out all the myriad

I ran 36km yesterday on a day that was meant to be rainy but wasn't. Oh I do enjoy the variety of weather aps I have on my smart-phone, by the time I have looked at each one I can usually find a weather forecast that suits me and sometimes they are just fortunately all wrong. It was a long run but I had lovely company for the first 10 or so km, then it was "see you next week". At that point I couldn't help but think that I still had another 26 multiplied by however many footsteps per km to do.  But I did it with a bit of judicious walking, and while I dragged tiredly up the driveway at the end of the run I still felt pretty good. What was different this time, apart from it being the longest training run I have ever done (would normally peak at about 30-32 for an ordinary marathon), was that I had something new and slightly bothering to think about. I was trying to motivate myself to take in enough nutrition, that is hard enough at the best of times but I  had been t

My next event is right outside my comfort zone, my first 50km ultra-marathon looms on the horizon, it's less than 8 weeks away now.  I took most of last week off training, recuperating from the ankle-injury-thingy and to gather some energy. This week the opportunity to get out and do anything has been a bit sparse, tonight though, tonight I hope for a few km to kick off this latest training endeavor. While I couldn't run I took some time to look at my equipment.  You know, I have a lot.  T'shirts from various events start building up, most of them are no use at all. The most useful I have ever had was a nicely shaped black shirt from an Australian marathon with a bit of writing on the front that had nothing to do with exercise, I wore it until it almost fell apart.  Most of the t'shirts aren't even suitable for training, funny shapes, nasty fabric, odd sizes, awful colours, and writing too much like bragging. I don't throw them out though, they hold important

No drama, this year the luggage arrived in Wellington with us, we had an uneventful flight down, and there were lots of things to do and see on the Saturday before the run so the whanau was happily entertained without too much effort from me. Saturday night I was fed and watered and in bed early enough to snatch a few hours of sleep, albeit of the unsettled variety. That's normal, my first night in any different bed and I don't do a lot of sleeping.  What you learn is that it really doesn't matter. Hear that, it DOESN'T matter if you don't sleep much before an event, provided you haven't been partying hard you will be fine in the morning when you start moving around and have something to eat. Up early Saturday morning, a packet waffle from the supermarket and a banana, back into bed for a bit. Then I got up and dressed with much uhming and ahhing...shall I wear the thermal pants (no), hat (yes), gloves (yes), thermal top (yes), rain jacket (yes), decisions mad

I have had Nike+ sport-bands for a few years, and when I got my first one back in 2011 I thought they were the most wonderful toys . Unfortunately time showed that they didn't tend to last long and weren't always that accurate as they relied on a 'footpod' counting steps. At that time however they were a relatively cheap tool for keeping a rough track of distance, uploaded your run results to the Nike website so you had a way of comparing past running activity and they were good motivation. Last year though I got a Nike GPS watch, what a wonderful thing.  I had been thinking about upgrading to GPS and it took a friend to finally get that happening. Now I wonder what life was like before I got it and could watch the km tick away, check my pace and know what was onscreen was pretty close to reality. Anyway, almost a year later, the thing seemed to just be worn out, the pins holding the strap on were rusted, and a little flap covering the USB connection pretty much disint

Flights to Wellington...check Dog booked for kennel...check Parking at airport...check Paperwork printed, tickets, registration, accommodation etc...check Running clothes packed...IN HAND LUGGAGE THIS YEAR...check Shoes, yuck, they are dirty and haven't had much chance to dry out recently... double wrapped in plastic...check Gels (mmm, new flavour salted caramel flavour sounds just fine, I'm sure they will be fine until I've used them a few times then I wont be able to stand the taste), pre-race breakfast things for the hotel room. Whanau...check Everything else...somewhere I started packing a couple of days ago, what goes into the suitcases tends to have a habit of coming out again though when the younger members of the family can't find something they want in the clean washing pile. There comes a point when the sensible mother-in-charge-of packing looks at the luggage padlock with a considering eye. Oh, and marathon training.  I'ts 7 weeks since the Ro

21km into a 34km run on Sunday morning I was slogging along the main road out of Maraetai heading towards Whitford Forest.  I was tired and getting grumpy. The cars were whizzing past, I was dusty and sticky and not keeping up with my nutrition plan and I was aware I still had a long way to go. It's all about head games. I was playing a game spotting anything more interesting on the roadside than empty cigarette packets and the new most common item of litter, the disposable coffee cup. I'd already picked up a nice water bottle and figured out how to attach it to my waist pack alongside the two I already had and I had played mad smiley runner with the cyclists but I was contemplating turning around and going back home. Then I saw something shining in the distance.  A tiny glimmer on the grey tarseal background, it sparkled in the intermittent sunlight, what was it?  My legs plodded out more distance, that looks like a Roses chocolate.  It was, as I drew nearer I could see this

Kate was on annual leave the other day.  I had a bit of a brainstorm and sent her a text message to say "next challenge the enduro cycle 2 x round lake Taupo in November".  She mustn't have thought I was serious, her response was "ha ha".  I'm not sure if I was serious either at the time, but I wrote on the whiteboard at work in very big writing a number of statements around the theme of "twice is good" and drew a picture of a bike. The rest of the team were undecided, would she or wouldn't she?   When Kate came back to work her response was a "No" on the whiteboard, but as someone in the team pointed out, it wasn't a very big no, the 'o' wasn't a capital letter, it wasn't a very emphatic circle she had drawn around the word, perhaps she meant 'maybe'? The idea got stuck in my brain, the more I thought about it the more I realised that this was something I was absolutely terrified of.  I hadn't felt t

I've done it.  I've signed up for my first 50km  ultra-marathon .  This will be in Brisbane in August, involving a flattish run made up of different combinations of  legs on a river-side course, map below showing different colours representing different leg choices.  Anyway, this will take me into new territory, part of me thinks mad mad mad, the last 8km of a marathon is always SO hard, why would I want to add another 20% on? Another part thinks its all about the preparation and I would normally walk at least an extra 6km on the same day as a marathon anyway, this is just putting it all together. Ultra-marathon has been on my list of things I want to do, I admit to rejecting a few in challenging terrains with lots of hills in favour of this urban version for my first, it starts at 7am and I have to cross the finish by 3pm, I can do this! I hope. So in 14 weeks I need to be 'ultra' fit. Before that on the 22nd of June is the Wellington marathon. I'm packing the w

I don't do taper well, I don't do recovery well.  Well, that's according to some.  Actually my version of taper still seems to work as in I turn up on the day, feel fine and finish. My post marathon recovery works too as I very quickly return to normal and don't seem to have ill effects.  Last week was the case in point for recovery.  After the drive back from Rotorua on Sunday, hopped on the plane on Monday for a conference in Queenstown. I was up a mountain in my free time ASAP.  I love being fit enough to head out for a walk, and come back 5 hours later having climbed a mountain.  Albeit a fairly small one in the scheme of things. Did two mountains while I was there actually, and an early morning 5km quick run along the lakeside, this run is a traditional part of the NZ Society for the Study of Diabetes conference. The mountain I'm standing on in the picture above is Ben Lomond.  The saddle where I got to was roughly 1300 meters high.  I started out just for a

Been so busy I haven't thought about writing.  Too many other things to do. As happens.  Anyway, last night I went off for a short run along the coast as the official start of the newest training effort which is for the Wellington Marathon in 6 weeks.  I was feeling very grumpy by the end of my run.  It was a fast (for me) 6km, beautiful weather, lovely setting by the sea, but the consequences of inattention, a healthy dose of idiocy, and the biology of the overweight runner meant that I came home with nasty chafing in several places, and blisters on my feet.  I paused to reflect that just over a week before I had run a whole marathon with not one single problem, but a short run with poor preparation and I paid for it. So to the Rotorua 50th anniversary marathon.  Kate and myself headed off on the Friday, shopped our way down the island, settled in at the hotel, did the registration, dinner, icecream and grocery thing and we were ready for a fun day on Saturday. Weather was just