Karen and Kate's journey to Ironman and beyond

Got out for the first...and last decent long run on Sunday, it was a bit of a lackadaisical affair though, at least to start with. Down the road a kilometer, outside a cafe, oh there's another runner having a coffee.  Stop for a chat.  A bit further along the road, text messages, hmm...would love to answer them, but I've only been going for 4 km, can I make 5 then I can stop for a drink, something to eat and check the message? SWITCH the sound to MUTE. Funny, I had pretty much gone cold turkey on Facebook which was turning into a troubling addiction but it turns out that the at-all-hours communication has a way of continuing around logging out of one app. I mean I do love the contact, but it can be ridiculously hard to take advantage of the off switch sometimes. So run, run, running along, ahhhh spring flowers, hey spring flowers, it must be getting near to warmer weather, pause for a look. Run a bit further, LAMBS, newborn lambs, that's so cool, take a picture and send to ...

I escaped for an unexpected Saturday run today, no preparation or planning, it was straight after a lunch of supermarket sandwiches in town, but the opportunity was there...so gear on and out the door. I headed off along the coast road, pottering along, one eye on the suspicious looking sky. Bit of a dodgy choice to decide to go light on the clothing after we had had a morning of heavy rain and wind, fortunately it all worked out ok. I felt a bit like I was running away though, dashing out of the house, just because I could. Running along, running along, thinking about everything except running, and oops, foot off the edge of the tarseal and oh drat, over like a tree and rolling into the ditch.  At least...at least I chose a ditch that wasn't currently full of water, and was more grassy than rocky, but still, why do I persist in doing that sort of stupid thing?  You would think I would have learned by now to concentrate, but no, my running remains my thinking time, sometimes...

Its a dangerous mentality when the need to 'train' takes away from just being able to go for a walk for the sake of going for a walk, or you have an automatic reaction that says 'it's only 15 minutes, it's not worth getting dressed in running gear for that'.  And it is so easy to get into that habit so you only want to do  'real' training or nothing. Last night I went for a walk.  I 'should' have gone to spin (last opportunity until who knows when), or I 'should' have gone for a run (marathon in just over 5 weeks for goodness sake), but I took the dog for a walk.  I had to make myself slow down a bit, get the idea of  'getting it over with' out of my head. The dog loved it, she chased birds up the beach, ignored me when she felt she could get away with it, ate suspicious items out of the tide and we wandered round the coast road till it was getting quite dark, then I remembered I wasn't running and it would take me a bit lon...

It's been a long time since I got out for a Sunday run, but this morning, the girls were away with their grandparents, and I was a free agent.  And I nearly, nearly rolled over and went back to sleep at 5 am when the first alarm went for early breakfast, oh madness, who wants to get up and go for a run when it's only 3 degrees according to the indoor gauge?  But, breakfast it was, and I was out the door just after 7, enough layers on to feel like a moving washing pile, but oh what a beautiful day.  Yaaaay frost, I could leave the first footprints across the paddock at Te Puru, draw pictures in pristine sparkly surfaces like picnic tables and boardwalks.  Ok, I still haven't figured out how to concentrate on being a serious runner yet, I think I never will. Not helped by the introduction of music to my runs.  Everyone else seems to do it, Kate does it, I felt like a luddite wandering along taking in the sounds of life, and because it seemed everyone else had ...