Week 3 - Saturday in the Hunter Valley

Along with our training on Wednesdays and Saturdays, we have to fit more running/ yoga/ swimming in over the rest of the week. Dave plays tennis and does Brazilian Jujitsu, so I try to do something nice like yoga..

Saturdays are (supposed to be) more pleasant than Wednesday nights. We're supposed to chat to each other on our long distance runs. This weekend, we were in the Hunter Valley wine region for the weekend with a group of mates for Dave's birthday. Unluckily for Dave and our friend Sarah, I didn't have anything to drink on Friday night so I woke both of them up at 8am to make them run with me. Fear of missing out makes you do crazy things sometimes. It's like missing lectures. If you miss a couple, you're lost for all the subsequent ones. Too big of a risk!!

So yep, had them both up and ready for 8:25am. It was starting to get hot by that stage (the usual Saturday runs start at 7:30 to beat the heat...). We only got 500m up the lane from where we were staying, when two dogs came out to bite us. Well they tried, very hard - and circled us with their shiny teeth and intimidating barks. But we powered on through and didn't give in to intimidation. I was keeping tabs on the time. We had agreed to do a 50 min run. 15 mins into it, Sarah asked if we could turn around. With another 10 mins to go on the outward run, I refused. Dave asked if it would take 10 mins to get to the next road sign 200m away...... I felt like a drill instructor!

But karma had its way and I couldn't make it to the exact half way mark. I was going pretty strong but it was uphill and my legs decided they weren't going to play along. If we had pushed that extra 100m...we would have run 8km!! Yes that's right, 8km. We later went back in the car to calculate it. 

A stitch took over for a few minutes and I slowed to a walk. Sarah kept trotting beside me for fear of stopping would make her lose momentum. Both she and Dave helped me get going again. The run back was much better - mostly downhill with a great view of the wine region, and even some hot air balloons. We slowed again to a walk when we passed the dogs - who didn't bark this time, they just wanted to play! The main success of the story was how great we felt when we got back to the other 9 hung over bodies, still in bed! We jumped into the swimming pool and floated around for a while in reflective glory. 

"Rapid motion through space elates one"
James Joyce

http://www.cantoo.org.au/Sponsor-a-Participant.html

Week 3 - Wednesday night interval training

There are not a whole lot of positive things to say about tonight’s running. I’m really not enjoying this. The email sent out during the week lets us know what’s ahead for Wednesday night interval training. “3 sets of 4 x 400m with 30secs standing recovery between each 400m (1 lap) and a 400m recovery between each set of 4”. And that’s what I set myself up for. So how is it I always seem to forget about the 2km warm-up?!!! By the end of the warm-up, I’ve usually had more than enough. I’m also aware that my negative attitude isn’t making getting around the track any easier. Plus it's far too hot and humid...

The one good thing I can take away from tonight, is the talk given by the coach on posture and form. I knew that I should tune into this as my posture is so bad and it’s obviously responsible for my neck and shoulder pains. I have to pretend that I’m being held up by strings like a puppet. I have to keep my head up (the other coach, Mike advised to wear a cap low over our eyebrows so it would force us to lift our heads).

Most importantly I have to be more aware of what part of my feet I’m running on. I’m what the professionals would refer to as an ‘over-pronator’. I found this out at the weekend when I went to buy new running shoes. The foot specialist videoed me walking and running to show me how I am putting all my body weight on the inside of my foot and thus causing too much stress on my knees and hips. Who would have guessed!

The positive outcome from tonight? No blisters. The new running shoes were worth the investment!

"No doubt a brain and some shoes are essential for marathon success, although if it comes down to a choice, pick the shoes. More people finish marathons with no brains than with no shoes."
Don Kardong

http://www.cantoo.org.au/Sponsor-a-participant-.html

Week 2 - Saturday

No Pain - No Gain

7:30am on Saturday is getting a bit easier. It does help that the weather has been great and there’s nothing like sun to get you out of bed. I’m still nervous before these big runs. Today’s run was 8km (or 50 mins) with an emphasis was on time, not distance.

After a quick warm-up, it was across the Sydney Harbour Bridge again. I almost made it across without stopping, so that showed that there was some improvement already! My head was in a mess with all the negative talk - I was convincing myself that stops were ok, in fact beneficial. Dave helped by picking out goals along the bridge, the next pylon or speed camera...

My 50 minutes got me through 7.5km, in pain. The worst pain was still in my neck and shoulders. My whole upper body seemed like a dead weight and I was struggling to carry it! My feet were beginning to ache too. Our coach came bouncing alongside at once stage and I gave him a full blown report of my ailments. Seems posture might have had a lot to do with it. I was crouched over... He also listened to how heavy my feet were (which reminded me of how my mam likens me to an elephant when I’m going upstairs in her house). We compared my elephant stomps to his fairy-like steps and I knew I was working way harder than I had to. This guy is 160kgs of muscle, a Boot Camp personal trainer for the army, and I was thundering like the clappers beside him. It was way too hard to change my posture at this stage of the run, but a mental note was made for the next time!

Not long after that realisation Dave sprung up beside me. I wasn’t really in the mood for a chat by this stage. Nor was I in the mood to be wound up - which is one of Dave’s favourite past-times. After the third tease, I lost my temper and my concentration. There’s obviously no room for mind games when a beginner is trying to run home! I ended up stopping because I lost all my energy in that 20 seconds, and then I was even angrier that it had happened in the first place. I tried running again and after 10 steps I stopped. I felt like crying. I think my last words on the approach to the Harbour Bridge were “I thought I told you to get lost?”!! The coach breezed alongside again a few seconds later with a cheerful “how are we going T?”. I”M ANGRY! So he and Dave picked up their speed and left me for dust - in fear probably :-)

That was the single most rotten experience on the Harbour Bridge. I was close to tears the whole way back and hated every minute of it. This running malarky was way too hard.

Not in any mood to smile for the camera!
Coach Mike giving advice on new shoes

“When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.” 

Mark Twain

http://www.cantoo.org.au/Sponsor-a-Participant.html

Week 2 - 5km Time Trial

Our first 5km time-trial. I couldn’t believe I was being timed already. I had only had two days of running behind me. It seemed so unfair! Plus I’d have to run 5km non-stop...

We did a quick warm-up - 1km, and then took off for the 5km run (12½ laps of the track) in 24 degree heat. It wasn’t just warm, it was humid. As much as I love Sydney summers, it’s not running weather. But the big challenge, with this one, was that Dave couldn’t run with me. He had to do his own time-trial. So I had to try to find people who we’re at my seriously slow pace. I joined a couple of girls whose pace I liked and we did the first km in 7min 47 secs. Easy to remember! I was pretty chuffed to be able to keep up with other runners.

But the negative talk started sinking in. While the girls were busy concentrating on the number of laps we had done, my mind started wandering off to how we’d only done ‘how many laps?’ and we had ‘how many more to go’. Glass half empty kind of thinking. And that proved to be my downfall. After about 3km, I got a stitch I slowed down to a walk. I had convinced myself that I needed it and I’d probably do better if I just had a rest...... I watched the girls pace ahead of my while a stitch worsened. My breathing was crazy. People were running past me (lapping me), some saying ‘breath in through your nose’. I felt like punching someone in the nose.... It’s amazing how angry I seemed to get when the running got hard! I suppose I was frustrated with myself. And then more negative thoughts came into my head about how ‘I hated running anyway’, and ‘why had I joined up’. The pains in my neck and shoulders were back, I could feel blisters forming, my legs ached and I was exhausted.

Luckily I managed to pick up to a run  again after about 300m, thanks to a few “lappers” cheering me on. Needless to say Dave lapped me tons of times and finished well ahead of me. Discouraging as it was, the fact that he then started up again with me, to help me through the last few laps (armed with a bottle of water), was a massive bonus. Another girl, Clare (who I knew through the swim program) joined us as well. It was fantastic support and kept me running until the end.

My final time for the first 5km time trial was 40:28, with an average 1km time of 8:05. I suppose the 300m walk didn’t help with the average time result, but I was just happy I finished it.  :-) The time trials are rewarded by ‘pub night’. So we headed off to the local pub for dinner - in our stinking clothes. I literally hobbled in. True to Sydney pub style, it had a barbecue where we cooked our own steaks. A great way to finish off a hard night!



"If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it." 

Mary Engelbreit



http://www.cantoo.org.au/Sponsor-a-Participant.html

Week 1 - Saturday morning training

I was still in a lot of pain after Wednesday night’s training. Stiffness and pain, and finding it a little hard to walk. A 6km run, therefore, wasn’t all that appealing at 7:30am on a Saturday morning. Yep! 7:30am. My weekends were over. And apparently if you want to have breakfast, you need to eat one hour before a run. So my Saturday mornings started way earlier than my weekday mornings. Challenge number one!

Luckily, we’re training in a beautiful part of Sydney. We start off from Kirribilli, right under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and looking across to the Opera House. The warm up took about 5-10 mins - running in a circle, lifting knees, kicking bums and all that type of professional looking training.

Our first run was laid out for us - across the harbour bridge, down alongside the Cahill Expressway and up Macquarie Street to Hyde Park (if you could make it). Sounded lovely. Until I realised I was struggling to even get up the hill to the Harbour Bridge steps. Tears welled again. And it didn’t help to have Dave in my ear telling me something about the balls of my feet. Don’t care! I just want to make it up this stupid hill... Once we made it up the steps onto the bridge, I realised I’d become one of those people I used to mock when driving over the bridge. Crazy people who go out running in the morning, just for the craic. I wondered if some of the passing drivers thought the same about us.

The Harbour Bridge, as pretty an icon as it may be, is a nightmare to run across. It’s sneakily sloping on each side and never-ending. The pains in my neck came back within minutes and I felt like lying down and crying within another 5 minutes. I hated running already. Everyone else seemed to be doing really well. That was another difficult thing. Being the back of the pack is horrible, any way you look at it. Swimming was so much easier because I wasn’t at the back of the pack. Being overtaken by everyone is really disheartening. To take my mind off it, I started looking out over the bridge at the boats on the harbour and the Opera House, and pointing out to Sarah that we’d be running past her place at Circular Quay where she could have still been sleeping if it weren’t for our craziness!

I’d love to say I ran 6km non-stop. I didn’t even make it across the Harbour Bridge without slowing down to a walk here and there. To look at the positive side - I didn’t completely stop moving! I didn’t make it to Hyde Park either. Luckily I was given permission to turn around at the hospital on Macquarie Street so I could run with the others on the way back. Running back on the Cahill Expressway is another nightmare. The hill that curves up to the Bridge is steeeep. Dave had left (zoomed ahead at gazelle speed) to go pick up his parents from the airport, so Sarah kept me company on the way back. We kept picking targets in the distance to aim for, and then extended the distance. At one target where we had agreed to stop, the coach popped along beside us telling us what a great job we were doing, so we couldn’t very well give up then!

Again this time, it proved that distraction is all I need. Sarah kept me entertained with stories of Tom Washington and Benjamin Nice, and then suddenly not laughing too much became my focus instead of the pains in my legs and my neck. I was so chuffed coming into the finish at Kirribilli, a downhill finish at that.

I had finished my first ever distance run :D

Second row, third from the left..
Not the best weather Sydney has seen!

"Some of us are like wheelbarrows, only useful when pushed and easily upset" 
Jack Herbert 

Week 1 - Wednesday night training

First night of Half-marathon training.

I think I have to set the scene here. My CANTOO half-marathon training takes place every Wednesday evening at Chatswood Athletic Field and every Saturday morning, starting from Kirribilli (straight across the harbour from the Opera House).
Our very first training session was Wednesday February 9th at 6:30pm. On the Tuesday night, I asked Dave - who had also signed up -  if he thought I’d have to run more than 500m on my first night (given I was a complete beginner). He looked bemused. Not more than 1km though? Now he looked amused. They might...
But I convinced myself otherwise. Why would I have to jump into the deep end. Wasn’t it all about building the strength up slowly?
I had also roped my Drogheda cronie, Sarah, into signing up. She put forward the same reasonable question. As a seasoned Cantooer, I convincingly replied with “Nah they’ll probably have to talk about the program, go through admin stuff and we’ll have to introduce ourselves”. That was probably more self-assurance than anything else.

Yes, the Team Captain, Mentors and Coaches did introduce themselves, but that only took 10 minutes. There was a brief overview of CANTOO and its goals, and that might have taken another 10 mins. And the next thing I heard was “OK, onto the track for a 2km warm up”. You what? I looked at Dave and then at Sarah. Dave’s eyebrow raised and Sarah laughed. The tears had started to well up already. I was still waiting to hear the addendum “and the true beginners, stay behind for some molly-coddling”. But of course that wasn’t said, so I had to follow all the other pro-like half-marathoners with my legs shaking and a sick stomach feeling. Dave sidled up and assured me it would be OK and that he’d run along side me. After the first lap I asked how far we’d gone. 400m.  That was my previous record. Anything after that was record breaking. I asked again. 600m. Wow, still breaking a record. 1km. Ha! I’m in pain, but I’ve more than doubled my record. And so it went. It was a slow jog but I pushed through. I stopped to walk for about 200m, and then started up again. My legs were so sore. My feet were sore (in my 4 yr old runners). My NECK was in bits. I had a darting pain from my shoulder upwards. Actually, that distracted from the blisters that were forming on my soles. Cue the first instance of “why on earth am I doing this again?”

At the end of the 2km ‘warm-up’, Dave gave me a high five and I suddenly remembered one reason why I’d signed up. 2km, for most people, might not seem like a big deal. But for me it was. I had pushed myself outside of my comfort zone.
After a while, I found out that all I needed was a distraction. Dave told me as many funny, boring, non-interesting stories that he could find up his sleeve. The funny ones had to be banned eventually though, because laughing and running is hard. By the end, I kept thinking how easy it had been to self-diagnose myself as a person who “just didn’t have the physical make-up of a runner”!
I jogged a total of 5km on my first training night (with the occasional slow-down-to-walk intervals).

The tone of the rest of the evening wasn’t just as elated. What followed was a bout of legs seizing up, struggling up three flights of stairs, counting four huge blisters on my feet and a 4am wake-up, which could possibly been as a result of my body going into shock. My body must have caught up with the previous night’s activity and said “Eh, hang on, what the hell just happened?”. I didn’t get back to sleep.


“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain"
William Faulkner

Sydney Half-Marathon, here I come.

Did I hear myself right? Half-Marathon. Ha? Half-Marathon. Come again? 21km. Eeeek.

So what led me to this crazy decision in the first place?

I’ve recently managed to face and conquer one of my biggest fears. Swimming in the ocean waters of Australia. Those waters where sharks regularly hang out, and where waves can pound you like mince - and then leave you for the sharks. Obviously this is exaggerating reality, because if it were a reality, Sydney beaches wouldn’t be so packed. So therefore, this fear is “all in my head” as my mother would say. 

To have lived in Australia for nearly four years, and to only have gone swimming at the beach five times during that period, is shameful to say the least.  To think that someday I could be back living in Ireland, looking out at a cold Bettystown Beach thinking, “I’d love to be swimming at the beach in Sydney instead”. Something had to be done. But I needed help. And that help came in the form of CANTOO http://www.cantoo.org.au/, a charity group that raises funds for Cure Cancer Australia http://www.curecancer.org.au/. They cleverly recruit willing participants to help them fundraise, and in return, they help them to achieve their goals. As with most families, our extended family has been affected many times by this aggressive illness. As a Crohns disease sufferer, I’m also aware that illness can creep out of nowhere and affect anyone at anytime. Finding a cure for cancer is an indisputable must, but the funds are needed first.

The CANTOO swim programme lasted 12 weeks. The wonderful coaches and co-swimmers helped me progress from a panic-stricken jellyfish to a 1km racing dolphin. I came 21st out of 280 swimmers in the 1km female open race. Not a shark in sight! Not only that but I managed to raise $1500 for Cure Cancer Australia, contributing to the cost of a cancer researcher, in their own race to find a cure for cancer.

After that achievement, I wanted a new goal. To raise more funds and this time learn how to run. While the swim programme helped me to face my fear of the ocean, swimming wasn’t new to me. As a teenager, I trained with the local swimming club and loved it. But, I never ran. Even at school P.E. classes, I couldn’t run. I did try - but I concluded I was a swimmer, not a runner and there was no point making a fool of myself in the running track any longer. It’s possible that on one occasion, under the duress of the P.E. teacher’s insistence, I may have run 400m. But I wouldn’t put money on it. It was a case of ‘if I’m not good at it, then I give up’.

Ironically, at 30 - my mentality is now ‘if I’m not good at it, why not?’. The past couple of years, and especially the CANTOO swim journey, have shown me that you achieve anything if you set your mind to it. I’m thinking that all sounds like an easier decision and transition than it was. At a lower level, it involved a few beers with my CANTOO swimming team captain Nat and a pledge to run the Sydney Half-Marathon with her. A few days later this was followed by a chickening out moment after Dave kindly informed me that 21km was a “bloody long way”. I believe there was also a mention of me “not being one to be pushed”. I dwelt on this for a while before I ceded to the negative voices in my head.  

Luckily, Nat knows the (healthy!) competitive relationship that Dave and I have and suggested I enter anyway, just to prove him wrong. So here I am. Proving Dave wrong. I must remember this every time I feel like pulling out of the programme... What a motivation!

So that’s the clincher. Signing up to training for the Sydney Half-Marathon, on May 15th 2011, is one thing. Signing up through CANTOO is another. By committing to the fundraising pledge of $1250, I can’t pull out. It just wouldn’t be right. I wouldn’t just let myself down. And that’s exactly why CANTOO is such a successful programme. Everyone wins.

So if you want to help me along this journey, either through donations http://www.cantoo.org.au/Sponsor-a-Participant.html or emotional support (gmail, facebook, blogspot comments, phonecalls), I would be very grateful.

Watch out for my training updates - I’ll try to keep them short!


You must do the things you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt