Karen and Kate's journey to Ironman and beyond

Its 9:30 on Wednesday morning. I have packed the car with everything I might need. Even party clothes for Sunday evening. Well actually 3 different outfits as I'm not sure what to wear. Its time to start the journey :) .

We only have 4 more sleeps! I had a long hard day at work and got 2 abstracts off for a conference that I want to present at, sort out most of my staffing issues and where people are going to sit in the office. I have staff coming back from maternity leave and staff not yet going on leave and new staff starting and old staff not left yet. All very confusing but I think we have got it right and no one is upset! Not bad for a days work. I'm now home. I have washed the car! washed the clothes and about to have dinner. I need to finish off IM plan of action and then start packing the car. OMG I leave tomorrow! I will be in Taupo this time tomorrow! Yippy its coming.

More than fine actually.  Note to pack warm gear for the swim, cool clothes for the bikeride, and cool and warm clothes for the run.

Sometimes getting close to the culmination of something as life consuming as Ironman, you are not paranoid enough, like I wore a pair of nice slides with a slight heel out shopping with the kids on Saturday and got blisters.  Other times you think the world is out to stop you getting there, I think there should be an official disorder, Ironman Hypochondria and Paranoia or IMHP for short. On Sunday I was running along a bush trail, talking (what else) and my right foot hit a rough patch and I lurched off to the side and twisted my ankle.  The runner I was with said "good save" when I corrected and kept on running, I made some throwaway comment, trying to sound casual, but I really wasn't feeling casual at all.  So much goes through your head in a short time, have I done damage, how bad, will I be ok for Ironman, can I even get home?  I kept running and the pain went away, sometimes that happens with a twisted ankle, if the pain wont let you keep running, or doesn't ...

Yeah.  Less than a week.  I looked on facebook and saw a post from the Ironman people with a picture of a big number 8 saying "8 more sleeps to go" and felt happy.  Then realised I hadn't checked facebook for days and that it had been posted on Friday. Went for a run this morning, 18km, less than what was on the plan, but I couldn't see the point in making myself feel more tired than I already do, why do I feel so tired and my legs so prickly and sluggish when I have gone from a peak of 15 hours training down to less than 10?  I'm waiting for the promised excess of energy to kick in from tapering, when am I going to start pinging off the wall with surplus enthusiasm I ask myself.  This morning's run was pleasant, I went lighter on the breakfast and felt better, I've tried several times but the advice to have a huge early breakfast before Ironman obviously isn't going to work for me.  It got hot, there were lots of cyclists and runners around, and swi...

I lost my new goggles a few weeks ago when some young lads wanted to sink the RB I was in. So I had to go and buy some new ones. I went to Kohi Beach to swim my usual Thursday swim and went back to the Blue seventy hut to get another pair. Well they had sold out of the pair I wanted and had sold them all to the organiser of the event. Go and have a chat with him they said. So off I went and asked him if I could buy a pair off him. Do you want them now he asked. Yes please. He had to drive home to get them for me. I was very impressed by his help. whilst waiting for him to return I talked to the photographer and commented on the awful photo she had taken of me the previous week and she promised me a better one. Which I did get. I thought yes this is a good day. But then the swim started. I was set to do 2k swim but it was a bit choppy and I was struggling, but I was going to persevere. The next thing  that happened was that I was grabbed by the ankle and abused v...

Yesterday about 75km into our 110km ride I was mortified when I dropped the last bit of my bar of fruit and nut chocolate on the road along the coast at Kaiaua, and such was the state of my head at the time that if I'd thought there was any chance I could have applied the brakes and turned around and gone back for it before it turned into a little puddle of brown slush and soaked into the tarseal I would have, sad huh.  Instead I pedalled away in the sun and grieved for my last bit of delicious sugary, fatty, fruity, nutty energy until we made an emergency food and drink stop 15km later at the Kawakawa bay dairy.  As I came out of the shop clutching my treasure I made some sort of throwaway comment to Kate about the fact that what I really wanted was a pie and the guys on motorbikes who were there also having a break laughed and said something about my choice and how it might hamper efforts to pedal up the next big hill. The chocolate was a lifesaver, and I went home after t...

Kate and myself took a day of annual leave and did our last long ride before Ironman.  We headed off from Clevedon to Hunua, with the intention of taking on that challenging 100+km ride out to the coast and back to Clevedon via Kawakawa bay.  Except, me with my rather arbitrary sense of direction, had us heading down down down a steep narrow winding hill which neither of us recognised, oops, several kilometers later with the brakes on full, a dance with a tractor (which actually went slower than me down the hill) and a quad bike, and we reached a dead end, we had arrived at the Hunua Falls.  Kate says "I'm walking up", and I thought "if Kate thinks its so steep she will walk, then I can't do it either" but we made it back up the hill, it wasn't as bad as it first seemed (just bad to the mind), and Kate kindly didn't yell at me when we re-read the sign and saw the 'no exit' in small writing.  In my defence, it was really small! For me it was...

I wrote some time ago , nearly 3 months ago in fact, that the 9yo had decided to become vegetarian.  We negotiated that she would continue to have eggs, fish and dairy, and that 2 meals a week would be meat, particularly given she still doesn't voluntarily consume much in the way of such essential  non-meat eater foods as vegetables, cheese, and most fruits.  She is still working hard at this and being very patient with being thrown a vege-burger out of a box because I have forgotten and cooked meat for the whanau for a 3rd time in the 7 day period. I have to say I am proud of her continued commitment to her belief that eating animals "isn't fair". C's stance has subtly, but painlessly changed how we eat in our house, and meat has become if not a rarity, much less common. I actually think now that we would be unlikely to go back to daily meat, for one thing I don't think it could fit in our budget any more, but also we don't seem to have missed it. The o...

It's interesting how often I want to write the same information as Karen. My Zoot shorts have fallen apart too. I had to ask a friend were they decent or not as they were rather stretched over the bottom. She said they would be OK to run in but not bike. So out they have gone and now I'm trying another pair. This morning I was up at 6am, out the door and running. It was quite a shock. It was dark, but as the sun was rising I thought what a beautiful day it was going to be and how lucky I was to be able to do it. I left the best part of the run until last and that was a small bush run at the Awhitu Regional Park. As I was running along I broke the new spider webs that were stretched across the path and listened the birds singing. Wow we are lucky to be doing this. 

Tuesday morning seems to be run morning, with a swim later in the day, tide permitting.  This morning I was out of bed before 6am, it was dark (when did that happen?) and I hit the road feeling thoroughly righteous. What surprised me as I headed along the beach was the number of other people also out, runners going this way and that and a big group over on the beach I could barely make out in the gloom performing some sort of stretching exercise.  There were even children out jabbering away as they trotted along with their parents, that was impressive, mine were still unmoving lumps under the bedclothes. The sun was just coming up as I got to the wharf at Magazine bay making everything I saw look spectacular, whether it was the silhouettes of birds standing on a wall against the light, or the first rays of sun filtered by the pohutukawa trees...can anything look as wonderful as the sun coming up over the water behind the distinctive shape of pohutukawa? On the way back the...

I've taken to heart the endurance writers who recommend taper for Ironman being at least 3 weeks long (other events might be 2 weeks or none at all if you haven't been training very hard) and am now reducing my workload by 20% for the next 2 weeks, and will probably do very little in the final week.  Last week was therefore the last of the hard(ish) work, I had my longest swim, 3rd longest ride, and 2nd equal longest run.  When I go out for training sessions now I am trying to think about race-day, so yesterday for example before the 27km run I had a 4am 'race breakfast' (rice porridge made with milk, sultanas, fruit salad), and tried to follow my planned run nutrition using solid gels, electrolyte capsules and drinking water at what I estimated were likely to be water-stop intervals.  I wore the running clothes I expect to wear on the day, including my new Zoot tri-shorts which I am pleased to report look set to become firm favourites, I put them on and forgot about th...

Friday is swim squad. Not been for a bit as its been school holidays. Back into the group and off we went. Lots of hard push and interval training. The last interval was a lung buster where u swim under water for the whole length. Well I managed to do it! I've never done that before. I think that shows me where my fitness is and how much fitter I am. Its hard to think that I have only one more Friday squad left before the big day! OMG!

Well, wandering with a purpose, but it was still wandering, out towards Kawakawa bay where the cars with boat trailers play dodgems, to Takanini where the trucks and trailer units rock along the roads, and everywhere in between where motorists must have taken silly pills today.  I was brushed by dried palm fronds overhanging a trailer as it raced past, I stared with my mouth open as the woman in the white 4WD moved into my lane and overtook directly towards me, I swore with great inventiveness (when my heartrate slowed enough to allow me to find my voice) when the free end of a tiedown strap with a metal hook on it swung behind a boat on a trailer like a lethal scythe back and forth just missing me. I did get to do a memorial lap of Ardmore airport as a private farewell to broadcaster Paul Holmes, actually Sir Paul Holmes, who was having his funeral in Parnell today, he was a big contributor to how me and many of my contemporaries viewed the world for years, I wonder if he ever k...

My race number has just shown up! I'm number 943.

There is so much differing opinion about swim training, some saying don't worry, its the least important triathlon leg and as long as you can reasonably thrash out the distance you are alright, others saying it is a vital stage and recommending putting lots of effort into swim training so you are fresh for the rest of the event.  Obviously I have barely done any swim training because I'm trying to preserve my dodgy shoulder so I have to wholeheartedly believe the first opinion is right for me. Anyway, it is important before I get in the water at Taupo in about 3 weeks to be in the right state of mind and completely confident that I can achieve the 4km, so Kate and me headed off after work yesterday for the near high tide to tackle the full IM swim distance.  After driving over the hill and seeing the whitecaps out in the harbour it was a relief to find it calm and sunny at the main beach at Maraetai, we went quickly over the road in our neoprene finery and swum up and down t...

I have lots of 'gear' but few favourite items of training clothing. If you asked me what is the best designed, most reliable, least problematic, most comfortable piece of gear I would have to say my old Zoot tri-shorts.  Of course they don't make the particular model anymore, and even if they did I have no idea of what size my old ones are, or even if they are men's or women's. These shorts never chafe, pull, rub, compress or allow wobbles in the wrong places, they don't ride up, roll down, pinch, or punish me if I pull them up crooked after a quick toilet stop in a race.  If ever I was running in tricky conditions I was usually wearing those particular shorts, they might not have been the prettiest or newest technology but I could always guarantee they would never cause me any grief. Last night I retrieved these shorts from the clean washing pile, then paused, looked at them a bit harder, and felt irretrievably sad.  The silicone strips round the bottoms of t...

I was at camp a few weeks ago and someone said their goggles were old after 4 months, well mine were a lot older than that so I thought I better get a new pair for Ironman. I was at Kohi beach on Thursday for the summer swim series and there is a Blue Seventy van selling wetsuits and goggles so I went and had a chat with them. We settled on a new white pair of goggles very similar to my old pair so off I went for a swim. Now it was a bit windy and choppy in the water so I decided not to race but have a little swim around the flags. The problem was that the goggles did not work and just leaked. So off back to the Blue Seventy van, how was that said the man, dreadful I said they leaked. That's no good he said, let's swap them. So after 4 different tries I found a pair that sucked to my face. Yippee I was all set. I got $5 back as they were a cheaper model. Excellent service from the boys at Blue Seventy. I used the goggles the next day at swimming and they were great. Sunday I...

Yesterday I was invited by my friend Jacky to swim across the river at Port Waikato. Everyone looked at me as if I was a bit mad when I said this is what I'm going to do. But it was with the Surf lifesavers annual swim across the river. It took about 20 minutes to cross and we had to stop half way across as there was a sand bank in the way. It was great fun. You never know what you can do until you have a go.

Longest bike-ride of 160km, that was a hard one on a hot, dry and windy day. I didn't stick to the nutrition plan, stopping for flavoured milk and extra water twice, and not being able to resist some date/nut balls the lady at the fruit and vege shop outside Clevedon handed me.  Using the salt capsules instead of electrolyte drink seemed to work, at least I didn't feel sick like I can after a while drinking the sweet stuff.  Anyway the ride was ticked off, am on the downward training slope to Ironman now...if you can call two more rides of 140km really going down.  One thing to break up the ride was offered by my usual trick of finding strange things on the side of the road.  I found a pair of clamps that builders use, each about 2 feet long, I couldn't leave them there.  A bit of manoeuvring and inventive use of my jacket and I ended up with something that looked like a parcel rack over the back wheel, I couldn't ride like that for long though, the me...