Karen and Kate's journey to Ironman and beyond

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 cou...

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...