Karen and Kate's journey to Ironman and beyond

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