Spring is a'sprung!

And here we are again, another Sunday evening has rocked around and I'm another week closer to IM. Yay that Spring seems to have sprung! Woohoo thats so cool!

Things are a'happening, I have confirmed accommodation for Taupo that is really handy to everything so thats cool, I have also booked in my massage lady so I can start having weekly massages from Thursday week (can't start this week cos I am busy!) now I just need to pay for it all!

Yesterday I headed out on the first ever Spring Complete Performance ride which started at Pioneer, then headed to Tai Tapu for breakfast/brunch/coffee at the Raspberry Cafe, then either heading back home or off to do long bays for those of us who were keen and could! There were quite a few of us and it was nice to be out and about with a reasonable sized bunch on a coolish but not nasty day! No sign of the magpies so that was good! But why oh why is there always always a head wind going up Gebbies Valley? Thats just cruel! Still had a reasonably quick climb up Gebbies and a nice ride along the bays, I must be going too hard on those wee hills cos my climb times up from Lyttleton at the moment are shite! Maybe I can blame all the loose gravel? Went running at the plantation today, I was all pysched up to head up and give Rapaki another go then read my program a little closer and saw that I was sposed to do a flat run, oh well at least the dog can come to the plantation and meant I didn't need to walk him afterwards. Blimey it was busy at the plantation today, there were kids/families/bikes/dogs everywhere! Where we all those folk when it was snowing out there 3 weeks ago?? Hmmm! It was lovely to be able to run in just shorts and t-shirt today instead of multiple layers of thermals and jackets etc. My running legs don't seem to want to co-operate as well as they were a few weeks ago, for now I am going to put it down to the fact that I am not having that weekend pre-training coffee that I had got in the habit of doing! Best my body get used to that pretty quickly and get its weekend zing back! Hmmm let's hope the withdrawal thing or whatever it is doesn't take too long!!

I've been good in all this spring like weather and managed a bit of weeding yesterday, today I cleaned my car (inside and out), washed my bike and sprayed the rest of the weeds after a very DYI trip to the new Bunnings on Marshlands Rd. We needed a new number for our fence, someone nicked off with the 9! So if anyone is in need of a 1 or a 2 for their fence/letterbox just let me know! They are either really nice in Bunnings or they thought I looked incompetent at being in such a place, I got asked twice by very nice people if I needed a hand. I'm inclined to go with the theory that they were nice!

Right, must be nearly time for sleepies, I have packed my gear for swimming, ironed my work clothes and organised my lunch and breakfast.

Quote for the Day:

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you.

- Rita Mae Brown

The Wilier is 1!!

Yup, my stunning piece of Italian carbon fibre beauty is officially a year old! The final mammoth payment has departed from my bank account and I am a free woman who owns a sexy sexy bike! Hmmm, I went and looked at the new Wiliers and that was probably a mistake, but just check out how much prettier they are this year...

Dog stuff!

Tis important this dog stuff! I was feeling a bit bad for my boy as all his stuff is hand me downs from Tara and Merlin. While its cool that he is using their stuff I figured it was time he had something that was just his, rather than pre-loved. Poor wee Zac, everything is pre-loved, his bowl, collar, lead, blanket, toys and the list goes on. Since he has destroyed the foam mattress from his bed under the stairs (yes just like Harry Potter but we don't lock him in there!) I went and bought him a nice new bed tonight! Bless the Warehouse for having a great range of dog stuff at good prices! He now has a huge bed, kinda like a big suede covered pillow! And cos I'm a soft touch a couple of new toys, a nice tug toy which should last ages and two soft squeaky toys, one of which has already been destroyed and is now in the bin, the other one has been put away for a rainy day! He is currently outside having a chew on the bone that he has buried at least twice before! Hmm yum! I also bought him one of those wee blinky lights the other night which is great, you can see him from miles away which was good last night when we were running in the plantation in the dark, some boys on MTB's were calling him the Christmas tree dog! hehehee

Running in shorts!

Yes its true, this evening it was warm enough to run in shorts for the first time in ages and ages!! It was sooo nice! Today was the first day of many things! First time I haven't worn my puffa jacket to work in ages. First time I wore jandals to the pool in ages (I have to walk about 3-4 blocks from my car to the pool). First time I heard the birdies chirping outside my window in the morning. First time I have seen the daffodils on my front lawn.

I can feel spring coming, its just around the corner I know it!

Quote for the Day:

If a lady wishes to reveal her secrets, she will do so by opening her heart.

- Abbie

So whats happening?

Well lots but I'm not gonna tell you about the thing yet! There has been some intriguing guesses which have certainly made me giggle! We are a curious bunch by nature aren't we!

Phew I was pleased that I was smart enough to go for my Sunday ride on Saturday as the weather on Sunday was disgusting! Rode out to Sumner and up Evans from the Sumner side, it was only the second time I have ever done that, I think I put myself off the first time as I found it mega hard and felt really ill at the top! I was surprised at how ok I felt climbing up there on Saturday so that was cool, next on the cards is reverse Short Bays, now that should be fun! Saturday we cruised down into Lyttleton and along to Governors Bay and back so lots of hills and a quite heated discussion about a slope that I said was a slight uphill whereas Geoff was convinced it was downhill in the direction we were travelling, oh well on the way back I proved him wrong and he rather sulkily agreed but refused to admit that I was right in the first place! Boys eh!! So Saturday ended up being quite busy by the time I swam before work then worked on Saturday, luckily only till 1.30 then rode after work. Sunday was gross out but I still headed out for my run, I had decided that I was going to run up Rapaki as I hadn't been up there yet and felt like running somewhere new. It was pretty wet when I got there and it was soo tempting to not run! I was good however and headed on up, I was sposed to run for an hour 10 but I think my running legs were still in bed, either that or they were feeling the pain from the ride the day before. I wasn't feeling that flash eh, I could have quite happily stayed in bed that morning so decided I would just run up to Summit Rd and back which took about an hour, still better than no run. In the end it was a smart decision as visibility at the top was pretty minimal.

Monday was weird this week, I had a planned rest day for some reason but didn't discover this until I had packed up my gear for the morning so I headed to the pool and did an easy 30min swim anyway for fun, then I relaxed in the spa for awhile and did some stretches in the nice warm water! Tuesday was marathon running clinic, it was the first time I had been in 3 weeks and boy did I notice that I hadn't been! I wasn't feeling near as good as I had been, part of that could have been attributed to having the most evil period pain for most of the day tho! Hmm not fun!

Had my swim assessed again this morning at Aquagym, its always a bit nerve wracking being watched and critiqued doing something. It went well today tho and it was good to get the feedback that what I had been working on was improving and that I was looking pretty good. Have a few other things to work on now, I like that you're not inundated with lots of things all at once! I'm at the stage now where I can tell that I am slipping back to my old habits and am able to correct myself during the length. Richard commented a couple of times that I was looking better at the end of the length, my response was well yeah it felt like crap so I fixed it on the way down! hehehe. Ali was making me swim faster so that was interesting especially as he commented that I looked better when I was going faster, now if only I could swim that pace for long periods then I would be fine!

Spin this evening, I haven't been to the late class in ages, it was kinda cool to see some folk I hadn't seen for awhile. No spin next week as I am getting my haircut again, lucky I have a coach who understands missing training for a haircut ;)

Quote for the Day:

In The Crowd, Be An Observer. Never Be A Player.

- Azfa Abdullah

Lots of excitement!

Yep, everything is getting exciting at the moment! Yay my bike is mine officially this week! Phew, 12 months goes quite quick really doesn't it. So that's pretty cool and having that extra money in my pay each week will go a long way! My new wetsuit arrived today and it is awesome! Managed to score a Blueseventy Helix for $419, not bad when they retail for $719 and its brand new so thats cool, no one else will ever have peed in it! It zips from the top down so a little more challenging to do up than my last one, I had to get Geoff to zip me in so I need to work on that so I can go swimming on my own. Now I just need it to be warm enough to go swimming, although this morning was pretty warm in the rain so maybe we can swim soon. Anyone else keen? So other exciting stuff, last night I emailed off to about half a dozen different holiday homes in Taupo cos I figured it best I get my accommodation sorted sooner rather than later, out of the 4 replies I have had so far 2 of them are already booked and the other 2 are still available so that is great and hopefully by the end of the week I will have somewhere to stay. I've just been reading on the IM website to see where everything happens leading up to the event and hopefully we will be nice and close so that everyone can go back to the house for a nana nap while I am out on the cycle course cos they will all be up early with me on the day! Have also checked out flights, will prob fly into Palmy and drive from there, flights are pretty reasonable into there and I bet they are expensive as anything into Taupo that weekend! And then of course there is the big exciting something that the girls are trying to work out and just can't!! hehehe that is funny but you will all just have to wait till next Friday to find out what it is, a select few people know about it because they need to know but thats it!

Quote for the Day:

Nothing is too wonderful to be true.

- Michael Faraday

Palmy North Half Marathon

Well I have gone forth and achieved another PB! Woohoo! I do believe that every race I have done since Richard has been coaching me has been a PB! Crazy eh! Good crazy though :)

I flew up to Palmy on Sat am to stay with Geoff's brother Pete and his partner Jill. They were both planning on doing the half marathon as well, poor Pete tho he was really sick and after being up coughing all night Saturday night decided it wasn't such a smart thing to do. So it was down to the girls, although I did offer to wear his transponder for him but he wasn't keen, I have no idea why, except maybe cos he can run a 1.35 half marathon!

The weather in Palmy was pretty sucky to be honest, fair enough it was warmer than ChCh but it was bucketing with rain and a bit of hail just for good measure. I got taken on the grand sightseeing tour of Palmy which didn't take long but the windfarm was very impressive and well cool, check here for more info. Amazing to think that one of those turbines can power 900 homes!

After waking up at 2am, 4am and 6am to pelting rain I was seriously thinking about not racing, the weather was gross! As luck would have it by the time we were up having breakfast it was nice out, blue sky and everything! It held off until after the race started which was good as at least we got to start in dry weather! At about 15-16kms for me it got really nasty, it was a torrential rainpour and I was utterly soaked! Oh well, once you're out there its easy to keep going!

I decided that I was just going to treat the day like any other long run day in training so I kept things pretty normal, I'd had a normal training week and didn't really worry about carbo loading for the day. It meant things were pretty lowkey for a race and as Pete and Jill only lived 5mins from the start we turned up about 10mins before start time and were pretty much straight into it. My plan was to treat and keep my HR around the 155-160 mark as I knew I could maintain that for long periods of time while running. The first km was downhill so that was cool, although I was trying not to take off like everyone else as Pete had warned me that everyone overdoes that first km as it is downhill, not much point smashing yourself at the start of a half marathon eh!The first few kms rolled along quite nicely and as Pete wasn't racing he drove round the course taking photos and cheered us on which was cool. I was feeling pretty good at the 5km mark although I was aware that my HR was higher than I wanted it to be, I tried to get it to drop down but without much luck. Figured I would just keep trucking along and see what happened. At about the 6-7 km mark we came through a tunnel and started running along the river, at the top of the path here there was a lone bag-piper piping away! That was really cool! Stuff like that always makes me feel a bit emotional tho so had a wee sniff after I ran past. It was real pretty along this stretch, river on one side, trees etc on the other side. I did a PB of 58.22 to the 10km mark which was cool, they had someone calling out times at the half way mark and I did 61mins to halfway which is wicked but I also knew that I wouldn't be able to maintain that pace for the next 10.5kms! At about 8kms I was real hot and just couldn't get my breathing sorted with such a high HR so had dropped to a walk and stripped off a layer which I threw to Pete along with my cap when I saw him next. Richard was keen for me to negative split the race so that plan was now out the window, although I was confident that I would hit my goal time of 2.10 and even toyed with the idea of making it in 2.05! From halfway we headed out around the Awapuni Racecourse, wow that is a massive place! It seemed to take forever to get around there and kinda did my head in, I know that's kinda silly as 21.1km is 21.1km no matter where it goes! It just seemed to take forever to get around there! Still I was on the home stretch now and the route headed back the way we had come so I knew what the rest of the course was like which was good and meant I could just focus on getting home, and then it rained! And boy did it rain! I ended up running with my glasses in my hand, about now I regretted giving Pete my cap as it would have been real handy in the rain! Finish line was the same as the start, up at Massey Uni, so you guessed it... that nice downhill at the start was a nice uphill finish! Its not really much of a hill tho, it would be smaller and less steep than the Halswell Downs, it just hurts when it turns up 1km before the end of a race! The final 100m is on the flat tho so sprinted in where thankfully Pete was waiting with my jacket and a towel! Official results aren't up yet but I clocked in on my watch at 2.09.30 which is a PB by about 20mins and given the conditions on the day, the lack of taper and general prep I am pretty blimmin' happy with that!! Jill did a PB as well knocking a minute or so off her ChCh time, she even managed to get hard enough to throw up when she crossed the line! hehehe, I'm pleased I didn't get to see that!

And there is no rest for the wicked, I was back in the pool this morning! Only a 30min swim tho which was nice, I thought about checking out Jelly Park but couldn't be bothered driving that far so just headed to Centennial, also sat in the spa for a bit afterwards so feel quite good now :)

It's nearly race day

Palmy North half marathon this weekend, weather is looking interesting, thunder, rain and norwesterlies but 12 degrees, which actually sounds warm given how coldies it has been in ChCh. I think I have packed just about every piece of running clothing I own cos I really don't know what I want to wear in that weather so figure best be prepared! Am hoping that I have remembered to pack my running legs, I think they have gone AWOL on me! I went for a run at lunchtime yesterday which is something I don't normally do but I had something on straight after work and had to swim before work so lunchtime was the only part of the day left so I don't know if it was a combination of running at lunchtime (it was warm too! weird), running in Hagley Park (which I don't enjoy) and that I think I have beaten the cold/flu that was threatening! Whatever it was I didn't feel like much of a runner yesterday so am hoping that spending most of today chilling out watching the Olympics and living in my compression tights will mean that my running legs will be back by Sunday! I did take the dog for a leisurely walk on the green track at Bottle Lake this morning, it was nice in there without the weekend crowds! Then ran around and did some rather unexciting jobs like buying energy gels and going to the library.

Ohh, found an interesting event if any ChCh girls are keen, its an 11km run but you get to plant trees half way round which is pretty cool. It's all part of the carbon crusade, link is here. It looks fun and I am kinda keen but currently I have another half marathon in my program for the following day...

Quote for the Day:

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.

- Raymond Lindquist, writer

I am training for Ironman

Yep we all know that right but I am only just realising what this really means in some ways. Yep I get all the time and effort its going to take and I am balanced about that. I am just discovering other things tho like I don't get to taper for a half marathon when everyone else does. They do because it is a key race for them whereas for me it is actually just a long weekend run that happens to be a race. Hmm, I didn't see that coming! Now I have had a few days to think about it and chat to others it makes sense, it was just a surprise I didn't expect. So while other people have a nice relaxed week heading into a half marathon I get to do my normal week which included a 14km hill run with the marathon clinic, the only difference in my week is an extra rest day on Saturday. So while I was adjusted to training hard the day before the short distance tri's such as the PhysioMed Womens Tri's I hadn't thought about the so called 'bigger' events. Funny thing is that I am regularly running further than 21kms most Saturdays so I don't really know why I thought it would matter being a race rather than just a run but there you go. All good, have my head around it now! I am hoping that I get at least a mini-taper before the Half Ironman in November, best I ask soon I think rather than wait and find out the hard way!

Am just trying to stay healthy now as I can feel a snippet of a cold appearing and the last thing I want to do is be unwell for the half marathon so I did pull out of last nights run and stocked up on some herbal remedies etc and had a very early night and feel heaps better today so fingers crossed that all will be ok.

Quote for the Day:

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.

- Unknown

Another new program

Gosh 6 weeks rolls around fast and before you know it its time for a new program all over again. Its always exciting getting a new program cos while some stuff stays similar, eg spin on a Weds, you never know what other wee surprises will be in there. Some good and some not so good! It seems if you are training for Ironman you don't need to taper to race a half marathon... Hmmm so I emailled Geoff's brother who Richard also coaches and is also doing the half marathon this weekend and asked how his week was looking, wow his is soo cruisey! I'm tempted to become a one discipline girl if I get to have a nice program like that! hahaha, I said that to Richard and he kindly reminded me that I was the one who wanted to do IM and he is right, so I guess I get to pay the price and train hard all week and race hard in the weekend as well! And he has some crazy idea that I am doing the Oxford Half Marathon in September but that I am going to go for a bike ride first? Hmm, I have suggested that we review that craziness after this weekends effort. My pleading that a half marathon is a long way didn't go down well after I had just said that I had fun doing Tuesday's 14km hill run.... silly me!

I've decided to switch my swimming up a notch or two now, I struggle to stay particularly focussed at the pool so am going to trial swimming for distance rather than for time. I tried it this morning and it was ok. Normally in an hour swim I will swim about 2.7-2.8kms depending on what drills etc I do so I decided that I am going to aim to swim 3kms in each one hour session. This means it will take a little over an hour to start with but I have a goal of getting that down to an hour and it means I will have better focus and I proved this today so we will go with this plan for a bit and see what happens. Will be interesting in a few weeks where I have to do a 90min swim and see how far I can get in that time, sounds like a good challenge!

I have another of those fun 2 hour runs before spin later in my program so it will be interesting to see how that goes this time, it made spin quite challenging last time round! Pretty rewarding tho to do all that effort in an afternoon!

So 30 weeks till the big day, only 4 more programmes when this one is done and dusted! My my time flies when you're having fun!

Quote for the Day:

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

-Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)

I've been slack

Well slack at blogging anyway! I guess if I'm going to feel not so motivated about something its better to be about the blog than the training!

Last week was an easy week anyways so not a lot of excitement going on. Quite seriously the most exciting thing I did was buy new togs, mental notes to stay away from adidas ones as both pair have crumbled under the pressure of regular use, having said that it appears I may have been washing my togs too frequently so there you have it. Really more exciting stuff did happen, I got to zip down to Dunedin for a day for work which meant I missed spin on Wednesday, never mind, I texted through my request for a hard class while I was enjoying a wine in the Koru Lounge! heheee

Running club was mean last week, 14kms of hills on a weeknight, now thats cruel! And I forgot to put my compression tights on for some reason and thought all was well until I ran again on Thursday and then my legs certainly let me know that they thought running was a cruel joke, luckily only had to run for 40mins though.

Saturday saw Kalina and I head to the plantation in the snow for a chilly 40min run! It was nice, very cold and slushy but nice! Then off to the pool for a swim, loving that QE2 is 50m lately, much easier for counting lengths. Then a soak in the spa to warm up before Kalina and I headed off to Dressmart for a spot of shopping! Ohhh too many sales and too little time! I did manage to buy the nicest dress for $40 down from $280!

Long bays with the lads on Sunday, it was brrrr coldies to start with but nice once the frost thawed a little. The boys are kind and let me sit in on the way out on the flat and waited on the hills for me. Thank you kind boys if you happen to read this :)

Quote for the Day:

Love is an electric blanket with someone else in control of the switch.

-unknown

Then the good, the bad and the downright dirty!

So yesterday was the good! Considering that my day called for a 2hour 20 run and a 45 min swim there was a lot of potential for this to be a nasty day! After talking with Richard earlier in the week about the fact that I didn't really pay a lot of attention to my HRM other than look at the data afterwards.... This is mainly because at this stage of the game for me I have found it more beneficial to just try and keep running no matter what rather than put to much focus on my training zones, so now that my running has come into line and progressing quite well I have decided that I need to keep an eye on my zones (apart from those Tuesday hill runs cos they are just hard out!). After spending some considerable time playing round with my HRM on Sat am, I even had to get the manual out, I finally managed to correctly program in my Ownzone for my run. Add to that a quick detour to the Palms to get some nutrition cos I had forgot to go out and buy some gels at lunchtime on Friday (prob cos it was stink weather out and I had an evil headache that was refusing to leave home, ie me) then the dog and I headed off to his favourite place! He is so excited when he pull into the carpark at the plantation! Its funny! We got all loaded up with fuelbelt, water bottles, gels and even some treats for the dog. I decided I would be a bit boring and do 2 laps of the blue track again (once clockwise and once anti-clockwise) followed up by a final blast through the middle and back to bring it up to the 2 hours 20. Hmm quite a daunting length of time to be running, its the longest training run I have done to date and will be the last long run before the half marathon in 2 weeks time. I have gone longer on race days as my half marathon times are nothing to write home about, however these have involved a reasonable amount of walking. Today was good, other than stopping twice to try and find the blimmin' dog, why he thinks its funny to disappear into the really dense parts of the forest is beyond me! Then he bounces out looking all cute and looks at me as if to say why are you calling me, I've been right here all along! Grrr!!! So yay, cool that I can run that far now! Back to the HRM thing, I was a bit worried that I was going to hear 'beep beep' for the whole run but managed to stay within my zone fairly accurately most of the time, often when I was beeping I would look down and I would be one beat above my zone and it was pretty easy to pull it back. I hit the lap timer after each lap of the track so I could see what happened to my HR as I got more tired, I was pleased to see that between lap 1 and 2 my ave HR was only about 2 beats different, it was slightly higher on the second lap. But for the last wee blast to make up the time I was beeping flat out and was about 5 - 10 beats above where I should have been and just couldn't drop it back, so definitely more challenging to stay in the zone when you are tired. Still, I'm pretty happy with the overall effort. Swimming was fun as well, the pool was quite empty at QE2 which was nice. I did a fair amount of swimming with the pull buoy since my legs were sore from running also its good for working on my position in the water which I need to focus on so I swim better. Sat in the spa for a bit afterwards as well, I think I quite like this Saturday swim thing where I don't have to rush off anywhere afterwards. Managed to get quite a nice back massage from the spa jet, then did my legs as well, now this part may have looked to others as if I was pleasuring myself given the way I was propping myself on the edge of the spa so the jet could massage my leg, but tough, needs must and I sure as hell felt a lot better afterwards! heheee

Now for the bad, damn weather! Today was sposed to be a nice 4 hour cycle. Well, I headed off with Geoff and we met up with Boonen at Coffee Culture Cashmere as planned. We changed our plan from our original ride tho cos the hills were going to be nasty in that weather. We headed off over the Halswell Downs and I was soo cold and miserable by this stage that I piked out and came home! It was just gross out and it was cold and I was cold and it really wasn't fun. Yeah I know it could be like that on race day too, but hey I have done a helluva lot of training in the rain and crap so I think I'll be ok with that if it happens on race day! Got a flat tyre about 3kms from home, that really pissed me off cos my tyres were muddy and gross so I got absolutely filthy changing that and managed to break the end of the valve off in my pump. Had to waste a CO2 cartridge cos I wasn't carrying my normal pump for a change. Still the hot shower was nice when I got home, then walked the dog to the dairy for the Sunday paper and sat down with the paper for the afternoon.

The downright dirty was my bike after todays ride! I only cleaned her last week too but now she was filthy! Poor girl, so I spent a good hour or so cleaning her this afternoon and changing the rear tyre again since I stuffed the valve on the one I put in.

Quote for the Day:

The only time success comes before work is in the dictionary.

- Unknown

First the week...

Gosh I've been a wee slacker! No blog updates for a week now! I'll give you the weekly stuff then do the weekend separately! At the moment I am tapping away on my blog while soaking my feet in the foot spa, ahhh feels good!

Week was good, all the normal stuff happening. Swim on Monday, thats usually when I do a 1km TT to see how I am going as its my long swim of the week. TT time was about normal give or take a few secs so I'm pretty happy with that esp as I am working on my technique at the moment. I must say it is sometimes a bit hard to get exciting about swimming 40 lengths, esp as once that's done I still have more than half my swim session left to do! Can't wait till its warm enough to open water swim again, no more black lines on the bottom of the pool and turning every 25m.

Tuesday at the marathon clinic was hard! Eeek, I think I felt a little ill when we got the email about the run! Imagine this if you will...... run up Barrington St, up Hackthorne to the Takahe, down via Kidson Terrace, Dyers Pass Rd then hill repeats x 3 up Merlewood, down Dyers. If you have ever been anywhere near Merlewood you will know that this is evil! I was quite relieved when they said we had the option of doing 1, 2 or 3 repeats up Merlewood. I didn't want to be a sook so figured I would aim to do 2. Well getting to the Takahe was harder than normal for some reason, I had a goal to run non-stop to the Cup, well that was a goal that wasn't achieved. Can't win em'all I guess. So was thinking maybe just once up Merlewood would be the go. Started running with one of the guys and we managed the first trip up Merlewood after having a nice chat on the way down Dyers. Neither of us was feeling particularly excited about doing another repeat. We looked at each other and said well do you wanna go again? I said that it didn't feel that bad now we had been up there so I would do another lap if he was keen, he agreed that if I was in he would join me so that was nice. We headed back down Dyers for another lap, it hurt a little more this time but I was feeling pretty good after not piking out after one lap. Had to work hard on the way back running with him tho! When we were chatting earlier he told me his slowest 1/2 marathon time was 2.06, eek I would be happy if that was my quickest time, needless to say I had to put in a fair bit of effort to stay with him on the way back down Barrington, conversation from my side was reduced to the occasional grunt! hehee

Hmm spin on Wednesday, poor Graham is always pushing me to go harder at spin, what he didn't understand was how hard that Tuesday run is and how mean it is to go to spin the next night and expect to put out a similar level of effort. I emailled him my program after this weeks effort and he now believes that Richard must be punishing me for something since my program is so much harder than his! I guess thats the difference between cycling only and training for IM!

Thursday I was going running with Kalina, the weather was nasty as out and about! The Avon just about flooded its banks and threatened to cross the road and head up the drive yet when I texted Kalina to ask if she was still keen for a run she said yep, I'll just get changed and I'll be right over! Man was I impressed! It was a night when most people would want to stay indoors but Kalina has been taking some serious hard pills lately and she turned up all ready to go and never complained about the weather or how hard it was!! We took the dog with us and headed off round the river from home which is just over a 5km loop. Zac had his first off lead run near traffic and he did really well, I had one of my wee flashy bike lights attached to his collar so the cars and I could see him in the dark. Kalina was awesome as well, she ran non-stop for the whole run and even managed a sprint finish to the end!! We were soaked but had heaps of fun out and about on a stormy night!

Quote for the Day:
Don't take life too serious. You'll never escape it alive anyway.

- Elbert Hubbard