That was kinda fun!

OK, I may have a sad idea of fun! I had spin class tonight followed by an hour run. Strangely enough this was actually my own idea?? Really it was. I talked to Richard a few weeks ago about how Wednesdays are days where I could do more training but don't really because we have spin class so I suggested leaving my bike at spin while he takes the next class and heading out for an hour run. It's nice and close to the hills and there are plenty of options for places to run, plus its kinda close to where the marathon runs start so I know where all the fun wee tracks and steps are. Tonight was the first night I did this and one of the other guys from spin decided to join me, we run at about the same pace so that worked out really well and we had a bit of a chat while we ran along. It's nice to have company on runs from time to time and I probably pushed myself a bit more than if I had run alone so thats good as well. We headed up Bengal Dr, down Hackthorne, up Valley Rd and those steps, down Dyers, we realised then that we were tracking well for time so we took a loop up Merlewood because its evil and its there, then headed down Barrington, Rose St back to Pioneer. We were still a little early so lapped around the field and still arrived back before the class was over so headed off to check out the paths around Pioneer before heading back in to tick away on our bikes while the next class finished so that we could stretch with them. So, pretty full on workout cos spin is never an easy event so to back that up with a hill run makes for a big evening!

Quote for the Day:

An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex.

- Edgar Wallace

Playing Catch Up

Hmmm, after all my growling at other people about playing catch-up with training sessions I have gone and done it myself. Normally I find it relatively easy to fit everything in, except for on Thursday this week for some reason. All I had to do was a 45min swim and a 45min run and as I didn't need to be at work till around 10-10.30 I figured it would be pretty easy. I got up and took the dog for a run in the plantation, one day I am going to work out that running first thing isn't something I excel at and I will stop doing this! It's never fun, was weird too, there were no other cars in the car park when I got there! It seems we potentially had the whole forest to ourselves which was kinda cool except for the logging going on which meant we turned around a little earlier than we would have liked. Off home and sorted out bikes to lend out for Friday, is it wrong that I actually have 2 spare bikes to lend out when the situation arises? By then I couldn't be assed going for my swim so decided to head to work and swim after work, I was working till 6.30 so figured the pool would be nice and peaceful by then. But by the time I got home I had a splitting headache and just couldn't bring myself to go for a swim while feeling a bit crappy! Not good, I have been real headachey on and off all week which has been pretty shite! So decided that I would swim on Friday morning which I did and I tried out the swim programs that Richard has had made up, it was pretty cool and seemed to keep me focused on my swim which is good.

Saturday, the plan was for a 2 hour run and a swim. If you live in ChCh you will know that it was super super windy on Sat am!! I was still headachey from the day before (or was that Thursday?) and quite honestly could have just spent the day in bed! Eventually dragged myself off for a run, headed up to Rapaki hoping that I wouldn't get blown off the hill! Run up was pretty average, I felt like I had no strength in my legs, am a bit worried I am getting sick off Geoff, he has been sick all week, bad cough etc! The bonus was that I had a tail wind helping push me up the hill. Once at the top I decided to head along the Crater Rim, now that was blustery!! On the way back I took the slightly smarter (read safer) option of heading along the Mt Vernon Farm Track to get back onto Rapaki and by this time the wind seemed to have spun around and when I was half way down Rapaki I had a tail wind fair pushing me down the hill! Flagged the swim again as I was feeling quite shattered by this stage.

Sunday was a 150min ride with a few intervals for fun and some quality time on my aerobars. Headed off to Sumner then thru Heathcote, along the base of the hills and out to Halswell before heading home for a run thru the reserve. Had a good ride and managed to spend heaps of time on my aerobars which was good, I need to keep practising that! Was feeling pretty good so decided I would do that swim from Saturday now. Swimming isn't overly exciting at the moment for some reason so I decided I would go and check out Jellie Park for a bit of inspiration. It's pretty flash out there I must say! I swam in the new pool which is 2m deep the whole length, both 25m pools had lanes set aside for lap swimming but I went for the new pool as they were heaps of kids playing and swimming in the other pool. The water seemed lovely and warm compared to Centennial so that was nice. The changing rooms there are huge and for you girls who don't like the showers, the showers at Jellie Park are all separate with locking doors and enough room to get changed in private! So a pretty good day to wind up an otherwise average week.

Quote for the Day:

"Hello there nice person

Did anyone ever tell you,

Just how special you are

The light that you emit

Might even light a star;

Did anyone ever tell you

How important you make others feel...

Somebody out there is smiling

About love that is so real,

Did anyone ever tell you

Many times, when they were sad

Your letter made them smile a bit;

In fact it made them glad

For the time you spend sending things

And sharing whatever you find...

There are no words to thank you

But somebody thinks you're fine,

Did anyone ever tell you

Just how much they love you?

Well, my "Dearest Friend"

Because I care about you

Today I'm telling you.......

- Unknown

I have a Wiki now!

Ok, so rather than having the world's longest list of comments on my blog I figured I would be clever and create a Wiki! So after a little googling I now have my very own Wiki, with a Wiki people can add to the comments etc as well as creating a to-do list of things we might need etc, the list is endless I guess. Why a Wiki? I learnt about these in a Team Leader Forum at work last week and it is a good way to make organising something simple and everyone can edit it so its not as if just one person is in charge of all the organising. Rachel - this would have been handy for the Spring Challenge!

So the Wiki is for organising the Half IM simulation down in Ashburton, this way we can just invite others to visit/add to the Wiki and we all have the same info etc.

Wiki is here: http://nades.wetpaint.com/

How to Wiki is here: http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

Enjoy!

Oxford Half Marathon

So here we are just 5 weeks later and doing another half marathon, the things we do if they turn up in our training program eh! Twas a little different this time in that I had to ride my bike for an hour first and given how I was feeling after yesterday I wasn't even sure that I would want to get out of bed this morning! After a bollocks nights sleep (why do boys have to play with their bikes at 2 in the morning?? Grr!) I was feeling about as well as could be expected this morning, so a little better than yesterday but not stellar! Puddled around getting sorted, it took me forever to eat my breakfast and for some reason I couldn't even finish it! Thats not a good start! Finally got sorted and left on time at just after 7.30, Geoff reckoned it would take about an hour to get to Oxford, lucky I asked cos I was going to allow half an hour! Whoops! Ended up out there and on my bike bang on time at 8.30 so that was good. I decided that I would just cycle the run course so I could scope it out and see what I was in for, and then just cycled up the road and back to make it up to an hour. I'm pleased I cycled that course as their were a few undulations along the course and it was nice to know where they were and how big they were. Race kick-off was at 10 so I had enough time to register, no race numbers etc, just write your number on your hand, very relaxed and casual which is nice, get changed and have a chat. There were heaps of people there that I knew so that was kinda cool to catch up with some of the tri people before the tri season kicks off. Start was very casual, bit of a de-brief then 'on your way' and we were off. No starting hooter, start line or finish line! hehee. I started of really well which was good, I was running along at a pace that I felt I could maintain for quite some time and I had made a deliberate decision to not look at my HR and just run how I felt which seemed to be working well, kms seemed to be marked in 5km. I say seem to be cos there were also some random markers on some of the corners and let's just say that it was a blimmin' long 800m from the 14.2km mark to the 15km mark!! That was a very long 5km!! Esp cos some chick on a bike went past and said that's 15km well done and it was prob not quite 14km, methinks her bike speedo tells fibs! First 5km was a steady pace, not too fast, was a little slower than my 5km TT so that was good, hit the 10km mark in a new PB time but the 5km was about the same as the previous 5km so that was all ok. About another km and it all started to fall apart! I really really needed to go to the loo and didn't want to do a Paula Radcliffe! The thing is we were in the middle of the countryside so its not as if there is a public loo or porta-loo along the course, I seriously thought about jumping a fence or ditch and just going but there always seemed to be quite a few people around and nowhere that seemed to offer enough shelter to hide behind! Prob would have been easier than some of the funny hops I did while holding my tummy!! haha. So the last 10kms was a mixture of walk/run/hop! Oh dear, well at least I made it to the end where I could dash to the loo! Ohh they had OJ at the last drink station, why did I take that instead of the water? It made things worse!! Apart from the headwind running up Oxford Rd it was quite a nice course through the country side and running into Oxford you were looking up at the snow covered mountains and they looked beautiful! So cranked out another 2.09 so thats ok, I am happy with that given the events of the last 2 days as well as having to cycle beforehand. I feel that there is a 2 hour half marathon in my legs if I can get it all right on the day! Maybe next year in Sydney with the girls!

Quote for the Day:

Reality is an illusion caused by a shortage of alcohol.

- Tollieman

That wasn't good!

So the plan for today was a 90min swim, straight swimming to see how far I could get in 90mins! I decided to head off down to Centennial as it is often quieter there on a Saturday morning, it was fairly quiet although there was an aquafit class in the lane next to me to start with so it was a little bit like doing a rough water swim! My plan was to hit the lap timer on my HRM every 10 laps so I would know how far I had gone without making it too challenging to count. Turns out I can't count to 10 as at least one of my laps was a lot quicker than some of the others! Oh dear! Still since I was swimming at a fairly steady pace I was able to work out how far it was in total. All was going swimmingly (yes, that was intended! Funny aren't I?) for about the first km then I had a headache kick in so I tried to ignore it in the hope that it would just disappear but no it actually got worse and worse! Grrr! I still kept ignoring and even at the 3km mark (just on an hour) I was determined to still finish the swim cos I don't DNF! Well, that went well until I threw up a little in my mouth (yes thats gross eh!) and at that point it was either a case of stop and get out or throw up in the pool. I went with the first option! It just seemed smarter! Eww but I didn't feel good eh! I stood at the end of the pool for ages just draped over the edge before I could summon up the energy to drag myself out, then stood under the hot shower for ages followed by sitting in the change rooms for ages before finally dragging myself into some dry clothes and heading home where I literally walked in the door and fell asleep on the couch for about 2 hours! By the time I woke up I felt like I could finally stomach taking some panadol to get rid of the headache that was still bothering me. Much later, its now 6pm, I am feeling much better and wondering about the sanity in doing the Oxford Half Marathon tomorrow! I guess I will see how I feel in the morning.

Quote for the Day:

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.

- Helen Keller

Who you gonna call?

When you are out on a ride and about as far from home as you could possibly be on the ride, most people you know are already out riding (and they are riding in the opposite direction) and you break your spoke? This was a first for me and while I do carry tools and can fix most things that happen on a ride I have never replaced a spoke and don't carry spare spokes around 'just in case'.

So, back to the start. My mission that I set myself for today since I am on an easy week was to tackle reverse short bays, I've never done it before, I've always been a little scared of that climb up from Governors Bay and my legs are often a bit fried on a Sunday after a long run on Saturday. This week I only had an hour run for Saturday and it was a flat run so I knew I would have reasonably fresh legs for the task at hand. Met Geoff's friend Nathan in Sumner around 11, he was keen to ride as well but not early due to an intake of beer last night! Headed off up Evans, blimey it was warm up there today and poor Nathan I thought he had been up there before, but no when him and Geoff did reverse bays they went up to the Kiwi and along the Summit Rd before dropping down into Lyttleton, that just sounds mean if you want a nasty ride! So Nathan was a little unimpressed with the climb, I promised him it got better after the hairpin which seemed to keep him going. Quick stop at the top to strip of my arm warmers as I was now pretty toasty, at this point Nathan tells me he doesn't reckon he will make it up Gov Bay! Hmm, I told him of course he would and give myself a mental note to give him a pep talk just before we got there. We were having a nice round around the bays, there were masses of people out riding today, I had seen a steady stream of folk heading the other way pretty much from when I left home, its amazing how many people get out and about when we have a nice day! We were nicely cruising down into Rapaki and I heard a ping like a stone hitting my wheel, grrr I thought, more dings! But no, I looked down and saw my front wheel wobbling all over the place so stopped to see what had happened, I thought for a sec that maybe I hadn't done my quick release up properly and since she is Italian she doesn't have those safety notches that other bikes do! But no, I had broken a spoke! Now thats never happened before! I had heard that you could wrap the broken spoke around another spoke and you will be able to keep riding bit after Nathan and I had a bit of a look at my wheel and how wonky it seemed we decided that it wouldn't be very smart to try that especially given the big climb we still had to do and there was no way I wanted to descend from the Kiwi with a wonky wheel like that! So it was time to make a damsel in distress phone call! Thats something I haven't ever had to do before!! I was going to call Geoff's mum but she has done a bit of running around for me lately so that didn't seem fair so I had a quick think about who was riding where and worked out that Dave from Chain Reaction would have likely done his ride by now, I invited him to come with me but he wasn't keen so fingers crossed that he was done and bless him he was and he agreed to come and rescue me, I did tell him he could say no if he wanted but he is too nice and said he would be there soon. Once I was sorted Nathan decided he would keep riding since I was about to get picked up and driven home, I suggested that he now had a good reason not to climb Gov Bay but he figured it was quicker than biking back the way he had come so he headed off while I made myself at home doing some sun-bathing by the bus shelter at Rapaki. Eventually I get a text from Dave asking where I was, my response was right here where I said I was, I hadn't moved. Turns out we had our wires crossed and he was at Rapaki on the ChCh side. All good, I was entertaining myself in the sun and waving to the passing cyclists, only 2 of who actually asked if I was ok, I must have looked competent or something! It was very interesting to see how differently everyone attacks the descent and climb into and out of Rapaki! So Dave turns up and bang goes my idea of a nice drive home, I had even planned to buy him coffee/lunch to say thanks! Dave had put his bike in the van knowing that it would fit me and offered me his bike to ride, hmm now I had a dilemma, go fave the demons of Gov Bay or a nice cushy ride home?? Aarghh!! That wasn't in the plan! Luckily the spoke hadn't damaged my bike so I opted for borrowing his front wheel and finishing my ride after he reassured me that the climb wasn't that much worse than Evans and was only about the same distance of about 3km. And he is taking my wheel into the shop to have it fixed so on my way to spin this week I just have to pop in and swap wheels and I'll be all sorted! So the moral of the story is, be careful who you call for help cos when you call a bike mechanic they may well turn up to fix/lend a bike rather than just give you a ride home!

So after about an hour on the side of the road I resumed my ride, thanking my lucky stars that I had packed more nutrition than I needed as I had eaten my Powerbar but had a couple of gels in my pocket so downed one of those on the way to Gov Bay. I think I was pleasantly surprised with the climb, I had built it up in my head to be this really evil climb and while it certainly isn't an easy climb I didn't want to stop at all which was good. In the past I have kept climbing out of fear, my fear being that I won't get going again if I stop on a hill. I didn't feel that this time, I just knew that I would make it up there. Although when I looked up and could see the top from a long way back and saw the steepness of it I had a wee moment of panic but calmed myself down knowing that the only really bad part is right near the top and tell you what once you can see the signs at the intersection at the top there is no stopping ya! I think I may have found my new favourite ride, although not one I would recommend with tired legs! Trundled off home from the bottom of the hill and yes I did stop for a wee breather at the Sign of the Kiwi! Bit of a nasty head wind heading down Tennyson St so thought best I be good and use my aerobars to make life easier, I'm never sure how much of a difference they make so this time I looked at my speedo while up on the hoods and then checked it again when I was on my bars, so with no noticeable extra effort and just a change in position I was comfortably doing 2-3kph faster than before! Thats huge, I knew there was a difference but never realised how much before! Back home, change of shoes, put a lead on the dog and off out for a 20min run which is about how long it takes to do the loop around Horseshoe Lake Reserve. I let the mad dog off once we were alongside the river and he took off chasing dogs and running circles around the wee kids that were feeding the ducks. Once in the reserve he felt the need to play in every little bit of mud! So he has rather muddy paws now but he is smiling in his sleep so it is all worthwhile!

Quote for the Day:

For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather, every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.

- George Gissing

Ohh the first sea swim!

What was looking to be a pretty quiet Saturday became a nice busy Saturday but it was fun! Headed off early-ish this morning for my hour long run, headed off round the river for a change. It was lovely out there today with all the rowers and kayakers back on the river, even the whitebaiters were friendly and saying hi this year (ick tho I can't imagine eating anything that comes out of that river!!). Pottered around a bit at home and got some housework done and then it was time for the big sea swim! hehehee. There was a chilly sea temp of 10degrees and to be honest the air temp wasn't a whole lot better! The good thing was that the chill in the air makes the sea seem less cold! To be honest it wasn't too bad, cold feet, hands and face was it really cos the rest of you is nice and toasty in your wetsuit! Speaking of which mine is still sitting dumped in the bath, best I go rinse that! I was pleased to find that I can get mine zipped up without any help, that means I can go for swims on my own. The new wetsuit is lovely to wear and swim in, it was nice to be in a wetsuit that fit as mine was too big for most of last season and used to fill up with water! So it was a fairly brief dip but it was nice to get that first one out of the way and it reminded me how much I enjoy open water swimming! Its so much fun and much much nicer than looking at line on the bottom of the pool!

After a detour for a hot drink and something to eat in Lyttleton it was a brief stop back at home to load bike etc into the car and head down to QE2 to take someone over the Physiomed Womens Tri course. Kathryn is doing her first triathlon so I have offered to mentor her and take her round the course and answer all her questions since I have done the races so many times before. We decided to do the bike/run then the swim cos it was a little cold out so we parked around where the transition area is and headed out on the bike course then back to put bikes in cars and do the run course. Then into QE2 for a swim, there was a swim meet in the 50m pool so we did laps in the dive well. Nice relax in the spa for a chat then home again!

Definitely a fun day and good to see the girlies getting in the cool water! Ohhh and yay I swam for the first time since my eyes were done, it is so so nice to be able to see at the pool! Wow that is cool! And they seem ok after swimming so thats good, was a bit worried the salt water and/or chlorine might sting a little or something, but no!

Quote for the Day:

Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.

- Jean Pierre Claris De Florian