August 27th – Removable bits!

I often wonder what it’s like to run without boobs! I think, for women, there are two general categories; faster (less endowed) runners and slower (more endowed) runners! I fit into the latter and I really would like less when it comes to jamming them into the most ridiculously restrictive sports bras on the planet. Said bra has to be so supportive that you can’t even contort yourself to get into it without near-suffocation! And then when it is on, it pokes and cuts and rubs “the girls” who were never designed to withstand that much punishment…aside from breast feeding, but that’s another punishment altogether! So I’d really like to know what it feels like to run with an A or a B cup, and not a D! And before I even decided to do the race, I had been running off and on over the last 12 months in an effort to drop some weight. At the peak of my weight gain the girls were a DD/E.

It is a generalisation, as not every person fits a rule, but the less you have up top, the less you are likely to have all around. So if the cup size were smaller it makes sense that I’d be pounding the ground with less kgs altogether! Weight had never been an issue for me in my adult life, I felt lucky. Then I did IM and triathlon for a few years and started eating like a horse. That all stopped (abruptly) when I started working full time…my metabolism was so screwed up that before I knew it I’d gained over 17kgs. I really can’t believe it was that much now, even as I write it down. Since mum passed away I made an effort to look after my body more; not make excuses for inactivity. In that time I’ve lost close to 12 kgs and I finally have a body that I recognise.

My plans for the race include me shedding another 6 kgs as I’ve been doing a bit of reading about optimal body weights etc, and it takes a lot of energy to carry around those extra kgs…so I may as well shift them. In doing that I hope to drop my BMI to 20%; at the moment it is around 23%. I figure that weight will be lean enough to conserve my energy for motion, yet not too lean ensuring I have muscle and fat stores in reserve!

I thought it was about time I shared some of this more personal, yet important, detail if I was to give a true idea of where I started in this process, on this journey. I certainly am not overweight, but I’m not super-fit or skinny either. As least when I lose a bit more weight, “the girls” might shrink and the sports bra battle might become less of a challenge each time I need to contain their vertical movement! When I took the bra off on Thursday there was blood on it; the poor girls had been rubbed raw! And in retrospect, I’d rather run with boobs, than have to contend with other bits bouncing on the run!!!

August 26th – Slap, slap, slap…

Please oh Running God, can my shoes arrive soon! I ran in to work today again and the soles of my feet just get so tired from the lack of support in my trusty old Brooks! I know my Suunto HR monitor got delivered today, and the shoes can’t be too far away. I don’t think they shall arrive in time before I have to do the City to Surf on Sunday. I can remember the Sydney City to Surf when I was a kid. I was never really interested in running as a child, perhaps because my mum (and then the family) told me I “looked like a spastic chook” when I ran. Not PC nowadays…but then it made me too self conscious to run. I know it wasn’t meant to hurt me, but kids always read more into what is said than was intended by the speaker. I remember years later at a gym with a friend and doing sprint work on a treadmill…he commented that I had a true sprinter’s style! It made me feel a little better but I wondered if sprinters look like chooks when they run! Perhaps I missed a vocation and am now destined to be an average runner!

I left home at 6.50am and was feeling a little better about the run than I had on Tuesday. When I got to the toilet block at Shelley, I noticed I was 2 minutes slower than Tuesday which was annoying. I thought as I was feeling better I must be running better; but what it probably meant was that I felt better as my HR was lower because I wasn’t running as hard! So I pushed on a bit more for the last 3 kms and ended up landing at work spot on the time I’d done for Tuesday, 1 hour 18 minutes. In reality expecting an improvement over a day is a bit unrealistic. At least I am learning now that in order to run a 6 minute/km (on back calculation) I have to keep my HR at around 160bpm. I averaged 159bpm today and 161bpm on Tuesday. I still don’t want to acknowledge I am running 6 minute kms…but that is what it seems to be. Now that I have my new HR monitor I will be able to measure pace and distance accurately! I am dreading the fact that I might be even slower and be running less than I estimated! Optimistically I will hope for more! I am starting to get competitive with myself now; I might be an average runner, but I am pretty bloody-minded and persistent!

I got to work and when I was showering and getting dressed I found out that my dress watch got its face smashed in on my way to work. I’d had it in a pocket of the bum bag with my bracelet, ring and lip stick! They were all worse for wear. The watch was smashed with lipstick all over the dial. The ring and bracelet were covered in lipstick, and the lipstick had small pieces of glass in it! I found this out as I retrieved it from the bin, thinking I’d use it one last time and lippied my lips and had glass sticking to my mouth! The ring and the bracelet survived after a wash, and the watch and lipstick went in the bin! And the bum bag…coated with lip stick and I don’t think it’s salvageable! Do you know how hard it is to get a bum bag these days! LOL….not fashionable but practical for running! I’ll have to go to the op shop and find another.

My right hip has been aching for most of the day; reminding me I need to get to the chiropractor! I hope I can get a visit before Sunday’s race because I don’t really want to run on it more with the way it is feeling at the moment. I am sure it’s only because the hip is slightly out and nothing more. Other than that my body feels good. Muscles are all good and I am feeling thankful for it holding together well. I’ve got another 11 months of this to get through. I think when we go on holidays for 6 weeks in December and January, it will be just the break I need to refresh my body and hit it hard again when I get home for the last 5 months before the race.

I attempted to upload my run to the blog from mapmyrun without any success. Might have to try again later, or ask someone who knows more. I spent some time on the website mapping alternate routes to work and have lots of runs, with one of 25km ear-marked for a few months time when I will be running about 2 ½ hours into work. I am looking forward to it….two of those a week and that’s 50kms down!

So far this week I am on 26kms and with the 12km race on Sunday I will go close to my biggest week a few weeks ago when I did 39 kms! It is all starting to build, yeah!

August 25th, 2010 – mapmyrun.com

I’ve tried using this website. My sister KGal recommended it some time ago but I was never able to get it to work. Now I can. I will attempt to add my map from my run to work yesterday, which will be the route that I take for the foreseeable future when I run to work (which I’m trying to do twice a week). This will free up my evenings and get some kms under my belt without too much effort, well time lost anyway! It is all effort.

MGirl has been a killer chocolate seller this week. She knocked over 2 boxes in 2 days. The kids just flock to her; she doesn’t even have to try. It’s like a little Freddo black market at recess and lunch. Other friends have taken box(es) and offered to sell them at their work. Everyone is being great. I know the chocolates won’t make thousands for the Lung Foundation, but it is a start; and who doesn’t like a Freddo. I will just sell them in the background all year long, along with doing other things too.

A rest day today, I didn’t even walk FD#1…poor dog. MGirl said she isn’t going to die! And I guess that’s true, daily walks with her have just been a habit I developed over the last couple of years, so lately I feel like I’ve let her down. I guess in reality if she gets 3-4 walks a week she will be a happy dog! My HR was back down to 50 today, lowest yet, so that’s good. I am finally getting some fitness under my belt.

I ordered my new shoes from Eastbay yesterday, as the soles of my feet throbbed. I was trying to wait for the credit on my wrongly ordered shoes to come through, but my feet couldn’t wait. I have also ordered my new HR monitor. It isn’t GPS but it does pace and distance and calories burned so I am happy with that. It is also a bit of a dodgy colour, a brown face, but I am not fussed as it was much cheaper than getting a trendy colour – like the red flame one I wanted. I’d rather save the money than have a particular colour!

The tiles in the dining area are going down today; finally some progress after things had stalled for a while! Can’t wait to see them and then I can move all the furniture into the dining area so I can lift the next area of tiles. I will never buy a house again with floor tiles I hate, because pulling them up is the biggest pain in the bum you can imagine! Especially if you are trying to do most of it yourself to save money. You can’t imagine the weird things I’ve found done in my place; renovation always begets another problem! But it will be so worthwhile when it is finished…

August 24th, 2010 – The commute!

You all know I really wanted to run to work last week and my plans were thwarted by weather and stiffness! Today I was prepared. I’d laid everything out the night before knowing I wasn’t that bright eyed at 6am, even though I am a morning person. With porridge in my belly and my camelback packed (my clothes and everything else was already at work), I woke up MGirl to make sure both the kids got out of the house and left just before 7am. The route that I’d mapped was 12.5km, but in the running and slightly deviating I think it was closer to 13km. If I can do this twice weekly for a while I will be very happy.

I hit Fern Road in Wilson and there was car after car in the morning commute driving past. My friend LGal lives in this area and as I’d run onto the road I thought “I wonder if I’ll see her”…within 100meters this car was honking and the woman furiously waving good morning…LGal and I must be psychic! She later told me I looked good, glad I could fake it. To be honest I wasn’t feeling great! The old shoes were feeling it this morning, and so were my feet. By the time I’d got to work the bottoms of my feet felt flat and tired, like I’d slapped them barefoot for the 1 hour 18 mins it took me to get into work.

I was happy (enough) with the time knowing over time I will get quicker. I just couldn’t believe how flat I felt on the run compared to Sunday, which was much harder. It could’ve been the porridge I ate, 20 minutes before I left, but it didn’t make me feel unwell. It could’ve been residual tiredness from Sunday, my HR this morning was 61 and it had been around 50. Whatever it was, I was stubborn-mule determined to keep going. I knew when I was out in the Canadian Rockies I would have to pound through feeling flat, and if I couldn’t do it now I may as well give up.

I arrived at work with plenty of time to get ready, not like last week, and had a leisurely shower and plopped myself down at my desk at 8.50am thankful for a late starting time! Especially when I get to the point that I’d like to do 3 hour runs to work, I’d be thankful for starting at 9am!

The day was topped off with a girl’s dinner out tonight; with MGal (a different one to the one I run with on Sunday’s – I know a lot of “M’s”), VGal and HGal. It is part of my effort to make more time for myself. I don’t think I’ve ever been out for dinner on a week night that didn’t involve the kids or someone’s birthday! Special, and thanks girls!

August 23rd – Early morning dedication!

Sharing moments with your kids are the things that create memories. They won’t remember how much you did for them (perhaps) or how much money you spent on them; but they will remember when you shared pivotal and important moments with them as they grew up. 3am this morning was one such moment! MGirl’s baseball friends, the 3 that were selected to play for Australia, were taking on Venezuela (and the rest of the Australian team) in the Gold Medal Game for the World Championships!! Baseball doesn’t get a lot of press in Australia, and women’s baseball gets even less! All week the Aussie team had been battling their way through the rounds, knocking off USA, Canada and Japan and they were now locked in the playoff for gold. The only way she’d been able to “watch” these games, was to follow a web feed that had a virtual game being played on the internet. The little stick figures would move around the field according to what the scorers entered into their computer at the game, live! It is very cute to watch it on the internet, but frustrating with no atmosphere! MGirl wanted to watch the game and I couldn’t let her sit up and watch it alone! So she tip toed into my bedroom at 3.10am with the laptop and we snuggled under the doona waiting for the opening pitch! Only trouble was, it didn’t start for another 45 minutes. We dozed on and off until the start and watched the game, kind of live!

Unfortunately the Aussie team wasn’t able to beat Venezuela, but did take out the Silver medal, the country’s highest result to date! It was a special moment we shared, and MGirl will remember it for a long time. Hopefully, one day, she will be there too and I won’t be watching it on the internet but live and in person…perhaps in 2012!

The game finished at 5.30am and we both went straight back to sleep and rolled out of bed at 7.30am. I was happy while getting ready for work and did a little dance in the bathroom…because my legs didn’t hurt, at all! I couldn’t believe how only a week ago the Sunday run had sidelined me for 3 days, and today I didn’t feel anything in comparison. I was very happy and surprised…my legs were adjusting already, though my glutes were a little sore; I had to have something to remind me how hard we had worked!

With nothing happening tonight, it was nice to go home and have a chance to cook and eat with the kids…something that is happening less frequently now that they are growing up and our family life is so busy!

August 22, 2010 – My new found religion!

I’ve decided I am definitely becoming addicted to trail running; or at least the feeling it leaves me with. Never have I done something that is more challenging that makes me smile more! It is so awesome to feel happy exerting myself…

As I had to pick up a comatose CBoy post-40 hour famine Xbox Challenge at 10am, our run had to be earlier this morning. Up at 6am, out of the house by 6.30 up in the hills by 7am! It was a strange day weather wise, much like yesterday, so I packed my light spray jacket and was ready to dodge raindrops if I had to. The nice attendant at the Shell service station knows who we are now, and all we have to do is walk in the door and he holds out the toilet key for us! I really should buy petrol there someday to repay the favour. A stretch and a chat, and 10 minutes later we were underway. Our goal today was to find the trail where we went off course last week. I didn’t mind that we had, the run last week was challenging enough, but we were curious to know how we’d missed it!

MGal was better at looking up than me and she noticed the turn off; man I wish she hadn’t! It turned out that the part of the trail we missed was absolutely killer! It went goat-like up a big climb. The fact that it is so technical and requires you to be two steps ahead of yourself looking for sound foot placement means that before long you’ve run 45 minutes and not even noticed…the time that is. Just when you think you can’t climb anymore, it tends to flatten out for a bit, turn a corner and climb again! And I thought Perth was flat!!! If we thought last week had been our toughest run yet, it was relegated down the list after today! All the while I kept picturing myself in Grande Cache, hoping what I was climbing was something close. I want to bring a camera next time and email some Death Racers and ask “is this anything like it?”

We reached the power lines, the real ones we were supposed to reach in 40-45 and thought we’d been so clever to reach in 25 – at 46 minutes! That is apparently about 4kms! That’s how much climbing there was. A quick snack and gel and drink, and stretch, later and the climb had tapered off to this lovely level(ish) fire trail run. MGal and I had agreed to head out for an hour this morning before we turned for home and at the 60 minute mark we’d clocked 7.75km! Not bad going once we stopped climbing. Another rest at the turn around (the back of an orchard) and we both decided we felt like going more, but knew we shouldn’t get stupid and that we had a big run back still. I’m glad she was paying attention because at least 6 times she called out to me where I’d run ahead a few paces and missed the turn completely. I was absorbed in the run, and she was my running-eye-dog…

This run had had more climbing on the way out; last week was more of a descent. There were still hills in the return, but also quite a bit of technical downhill. It seemed more difficult on the way up and before we knew it we were at the bottom of the last big climb into the start of our run! Along the way we chatted about a goal to extend by 10-15 minutes before the turn around each Sunday, building up the total gradually. I knew that speed and distance is a little hard to average in this type of running, but we’d burnt 1200 calories by the time we finished. 200 more than last week! With a maximum HR of 184; and an average of 153 – I was happy with a 2 hour and 6 minute run, about 15.5km! We both agreed we were more than happy as we didn’t feel as dead as last week, and knew before long we’d be over the 3 hour mark! MGal was going to kick this IM in NZ in the butt, and she was helping me to kick my goal also.

We’ve also set a goal of riding up Kalamunda Hill, locking the bikes, doing the run, and riding home. That probably won’t happen for another month, but MGal needs cycle work for her IM and it can’t hurt me. And if any of you know Kalamunda Hill….it will be a challenging brick session for a Sunday. I will conquer the hills, I know it! Another morning where we were both smiling at just how beautiful it was. The sun was poking through the eucalypt and with every breeze; we got our own personal sun shower with all the moisture falling off the trees. My shoes got quite damp, but the merino socks I had on keep my feet dry. Thank you lambies!

With Cboy collected and our other tasks complete, we were home just after lunch. I had lunch and rehydrated (didn’t really need to I think I piddled about 4 times on the run!) and spent the afternoon weeding an area I’d set aside for a future veggie garden and shifting soil into it. I then dumped lots of junk on the verge waiting for the council collection. Whatever slackness I’d exhibited yesterday I’d more than made up for today. I was pooped by bed time, a sleep well earned.

August 21, 2010 – How do you define slack?!

I was wondering how I’ve qualified the term slack. I did get a sleep in, until 7.30am, yeah! Then the rest of the morning was spent chipping tile residue from the floor (which is becoming a mind-numbingly boring experience) and washing clothes and hanging them out. Went and watched MGirl’s last netball game of the season, came home to walk FD#1, folded more clothes and then the afternoon was gone!

Around 1.30pm I’d thought about riding my bike, which I not done in ages, as the sun was poking through the clouds…and then it started to pour. With run apathy looming today, and not it raining…that was it, I was a slacker. But it wasn’t like I did nothing at all, I still burnt some calories! I was a bit timid about doing much running today as I was so looking forward to the run tomorrow. Given my total stiffness for much of the week, I didn’t want to overdo it and not feel up to my long run tomorrow. I’d thought about swimming as well, but really couldn’t be bothered getting my head wet!

I spent last night folding clothes, the ones from the week before, clearing the couch for the new lot of dried, clean as yet unfolded clothes that now occupy the couch…again. It’s a constant cycle! Then I mixed up my 24 boxes of chocolates so that each carry box had some of all the varieties I’d bought. Such an exciting evening. CBoy was off at a mate’s place doing the 40 Hour Famine, by staying up for 40 hours on an Xbox playing challenge and attempting to not eat food as well. I wondered how he was going, but the battery on his mobile is obviously flat as it goes straight to message bank!