Karen and Kate's journey to Ironman and beyond

I have been jittering all over the place since the marathon just over 2 days ago.  Half the time I dont know whether I want to lie down and stare at the inside of my eyelids, or run madly up and down the street. Physically I feel really good, nothing hurts and I am getting around as normal (some would say I obviously don't work hard enough), it is just a feeling of being in a bit of a strange state that only time and keeping moving can deal with.  The only real evidence is that I am ferociously hungry, eat too much, then cant stand the thought of food until the hungries arrive again.  If I listed today's food intake it would be unbalanced and sound bizarre, I mean the sort of stuff we have in the fridge tells a story...like cheese (3 varieties), guacamole, quince paste, and fruit.  Much of it goes together strangely well on a bagel at 5am.  This will pass, I know. Today I have walked and walked and thought and walked some more.   I thought about what I li...

Today we went and registered for the conference, well after all that is why we are in the GC. We had a lovely walk over to the conference venue, picked up our bags and had a coffee at one of the stands. The venue looked smaller than usual with less stands. It may be that Australia is having the same  issues as NZ and have restrictions on drugs and equipment. It will be interesting to see what they are up to.  Any way we thought it would be fun to go back to our apartment by monorail, but it was closed, we were too early. Karen though she remembered a way back on the other side of Jupiter's Casino, we were here 11 years ago! It has been a little bit of a joke since being here that Karen has been the navigator, but not quite taking any notice of where we are, so it was a leap of faith to follow her instructions. I'm still very sore from the run and can move but stairs are not good or moving too fast. The instructions were right and Karen...

Who would have thought we would have run enough marathons to actually have to think which one was which?  What started us on that unlikely realisation was the fact that we were trying to remember if we felt better or worse after this marathon, the 'inaugural' Sunshine Coast Marathon which we ran on Sunday morning. But I'm getting ahead of myself here, talking about the finish before the start.   And it was a nice start, imagine this, starting your day by stretching against a low fence while looking out over someone else's beautiful ocean, the sky just starting to light up, with the air warm and soft. We lined up in the starting chute when it was time, the gun went, and we ran up the slight rise towards what we thought was the first of 5 trips up the only hill.  Except we had a wonderful surprise, the course had been changed and that first time up the hill was the last, not that it was a bad one, but I am sure it would have gotten longer and steeper with every lap un...

Its Monday morning and I am sitting in the sun on the gold coast. GC as I am told is the lingo for us from NZ. I have completed another marathon! It was a different experience as it was hot and dry! We do not do many of those. The 6 am start can be difficult but we are on NZ time and so it was really only 8am. A little cold and we had to keep warm by walking and stretching. The Aussies thought it was winter with gloves and coats on. We had spent a long time getting ready with 100 proof sunblock to stop getting sunburnt, so probably looked a little pale. We lined up and off we went. First hill within the first 100 meters, but halfway up we saw the turn around point, wow we do not have to go up this hill again, that was a really nice surprise as thought we had to do it 5 times. I do not do hills but I ran this one, which means its not really a hill. The route was a little repetitive as it was a loop x 4, but I could not work out where I was most of the time anyway. T...

We arrived in the sunshine coast on Friday afternoon, funny how familiar it seemed, that long road up the coast from Brisbane looked like all the other roads in our limited Australian experience. We have stayed in a tiny unit in a ‘resort’ at Alexandra Headlands, and looking at the lineup of port-a-loo’s on the other side of the road we realised that Kate had again struck the perfect place, we were right over the road from the startline for the marathon. I ate too much on Friday, combined with a horribly early start to get to the airport I was feeling sluggish and “oh no, who had this insane idea”.   Saturday wasn’t much better, perhaps I was about to be afflicted with some nasty lurgy, is that a twinge in my sciatic nerve, ah, my Achilles tendons are tender?  The only real advantage about having something like a marathon to worry about, I haven’t been in the least bit worried about the presentation I have to give next week at the Australian diabetes conference. But it i...

I have a cold and a cough. I always have one just before an event and no I do not over train in fact I have not done any exercise for 4 days. The little voice in my head is shouting at me do some exercise the sensible part says no . A gp said Steroids would help , the pharmacist says antibiotics, so what do I do but go to the homeopath and get some dreadful tasting liquid. I have never tasted anything so dreadful.... But still if it works that has got to be good. I'm ready anyway. Bags not packed but will be later tonight. I can only get better. So Sunshine coast here I come ready or not!

Sunday morning, breakfast of rice porridge at 5am, back to bed, then out of bed again at 7am, into running gear and out the door into...dense fog. It was beautiful outside, but I found myself struggling, finding it tricky to breathe, legs sluggish and not wanting to carry me fast enough to get some sort of rhythm going.  I looked at the sport-band measuring my pace and found I was running slow even for me, a brief spurt of effort and then my speed would drop back down again.   That first 4km to get to Te Puru was unpleasant, and I suddenly realised that in spite of wearing just a singlet and tri-pants, I was over-warm in the damp, clinging fog.  Doesn't that bode well for the predicted mid 20's temperature for next Sundays event. So it was an unmemorable 4km first-up.  Then another 4km back to Maraetai feeling a bit better having a good chat along the way to one of the Te Puru runners.  Then another 6km circuit being strict about not giving up and heading up...

Smallest daughter is making a habit of climbing into bed for a cuddle first thing in the morning, before the alarm goes off in fact. I asked her how she knows it isn't the middle of the night and she says "it's getting light mum".  Hmm, I peer blearily at the windows, she might see it, I don't yet. Anyway, I love these opportunities to snuggle with a warm, fragrant little person and reflect that it will be only too soon before she grows up and is above these sorts of indulgences with her old mum.  I lie there with her soft little cheek pressed up against my face, feel her little heart pattering away against me, and ask myself this question, "the kids haven't had colds for months, why do they suddenly get one a week before I run a marathon?" But I guess that is what echinacea and vitamin C is for.  I'll have the cuddles, as many as I can get.

My daughter Sophie is in Dunedin studying, no really she is studying! So it was time to go and see her. I had two runs planned for the weekend, very exciting running in different places. I was packing on Wednesday evening and could not find the running shoes. I looked everywhere and realised I had left them behind at hot yoga the day before. Well I was as anxious as anything. My running shoes missing and only two weeks to go before the marathon. Also they had the Nike transmitter on them too. Well there was nothing I could do but buy a new pair. We were in rebel sports and I stick to the same style, as they seem to suit me. This time though they are purple and black, does that matter, well not really but will they go with the rest of my running outfit? So my first run was down to a place called Saint Clair's. It was a beautiful run along roads with traffic! but it was so well worth it when I got to the end of the road. It was East coast waves crashing over the wall and everyone r...

Last long run was on Sunday.  Just over 28km in 3 hours 10 minutes. No pain, well not in the ITB but the rest of me felt pretty miserable.  I tell myself that LSD runs (Long Sadistic Distance) are meant to feel like that, especially with me having made a leap from barely doing any running mileage (just hours and hours of frustrating walk/run) into an almost peak training schedule only a few weeks out from a marathon.   And now, daft though it sounds...taper time.  I had a weird marathon dream the other night, the marathon course wound through the inside of peoples houses and I distinctly remember running through lounges with people sitting in their chairs, me trying not to get in the way of the television, but having to ask someone where the kitchen was so I could get a drink.  Wonder what deep psychological truth that bit of brain strangeness was meant to be getting at? I'm pretty happy that people important to me, like Cousin R, are out there being en...

Just been for the second run of the week...yes...actual RUN without stopping to walk type of running.  14km, not a trace of a twinge in that pesky ITB, even managed some mild upward and downward slopes. But I am not run fit, even today's good 14km doesn't tell me how things will go for 42km so I need a challenging long run on Sunday to give me a better idea of how much I can cope with, and to work out a final strategy (eg, how much planned walking if any, sustainable pace etc). There are 16 sleeps until the Sunshine Coast Marathon .  Only one long run this Sunday and then taper starts, that's probably 6 more runs in total and time to accept I wont get any fitter in the next two weeks.  Need to check gear, try not to put any more weight on (am 2kg heavier than I was at the Rotorua Marathon), and convince the brain that I'm ready. I see that one of the random prizes for the marathon is a rather cute little red motor scooter.  That could be a problem to fit into t...

Injuries have taken most of my attention since the Rotorua Marathon at end of April, first the shoulder, then 7 weeks ago the ITB. I have followed my original  recovery plan pretty much, sought and attempted to reconcile lots of advice (proper roller/different exercises) and wondered if I would ever get back on track with my training so as to be ready for the Sunshine Coast Marathon, now in less than 3 weeks.  I am really happy to report now that last week things started getting better!   I gave up trying to run properly in late July and have since been focusing on fast walking, not 'race-walking' though...that was just too tough to get good at in the short time-frame and it seemed to set off the ITB problem just like the running.  I've been doing this hard-out ordinary walking and with effort (and my nike sportband) I can manage to scoot along walking an 8 minute km.   This walking has become interspersed with short runs, and I found I could avoid pain by being...

Just a quick note on Karen's obsession on Chocolate: I went to the food show on Friday and went to my favourite peanut stand 100% Nutz. I have peanut butter every day on a bagel which gives me my protein and energy for the day. Well they now have chocolate peanut butter, and its not too bad for you so of course I had to buy some. Its 3 weeks or 21 days until the sunshine coast marathon, so yesterday was my long run. It should have been 3 hours but took me 3hours 50mins. I walked a bit.... But I felt so tired, I know I should and I know its good but I 'm tired like a child, you know its like I'm going to have a temper tantrum cus I'm so tired. Today I went out on the bike and felt tired again but averaged 23k do not understand the body , but as long as I get through that's what I'm after. I watched the Triathlon on the Olympics last night, and felt every bump when the girls fell off their bikes. The run was amazing, so fast, and the ones in tears well that wi...

I will continue to look for things which reinforce how I want to do things.  The attached link is (another) perfect example of finding something to back up what you already believe.  Of course on this topic I already knew I wasn't wrong even if the rest of the world disagreed...it has even got references!    http://www.halhigdon.com/writing/52680/Chocolate%20and%20Your%20Sports%20Diet