So Busy I forgot the 10% Rule

At a staff meeting the other night it took about 3-4 gos to find a night that I was free for the next one. The girls always comment on how much I pack in to life but to me it's normal. Mind you it really makes me appreciate rest days :-).

As for training, it's bumped up quite a bit over the last 2 weeks. When I checked my totals I've already doubled March's k's and April isn't over yet. I'm feeling much better on my increased meds and am recovering much better from sessions. I do have some tiny niggles occasionally but they are just the muscles reacting to change.

I entered the SMH Half at the end of March so a few of us did a lap of the course the other day and I probably went a bit quicker than I should have. It turned out to be the same pace as I ran Striders in the Domain. I guess I'm hoping this means I can improve again at North Head next week.

TA

Limbo

Limbo - n. A state of nothingness; inbetween.

Limbo - n. A West Indian dance requiring the dancer to bend ever further backwards to achieve an ever more difficult goal.

Yep, I think that just about describes it. I went to Dr Pain today, and as expected, he wants me to wait and find out from the Neurosurgeon in two weeks whether/when I can run again, so here I wait (Again. Still.)...

The good news is that the swimming is going swimmingly. I swam 1km continuously today (plus 300m warm up and 100m warm down both with fins which is definitely a step up on the struggle-to-the-other-end-then-gasp-for-a-few-minutes that use to constitute a swim session for me. It amazing what practicing every second day for three months can achieve :-)

Anyhow, it's bike tomorrow morning to work, and then an hour's walk while everyone else is running at Run Club (I'm not bitter; really :-) :-) ), and so the week continues...

Gnome

p.s. had a top time at the Canberra Marathon on Sunday. Drove down late Saturday night, stopping in a picnic area for a few hours kip in the car half way there. Only just arrived in time to wish a few friends good luck and then spent the morning riding around taking photos and cheering. It was so pleasing to see Uncle Dave get his new PB in fine style, and Tesso ripping in to her 50k (not to mention Nite-time-runner's remarkable improvement and too many others to mention), but I was really upset for Wayne (JD) and his battles with the Cramp Bear. It hurt so much just watching and waiting and seeing the time tick by; it's hard to imagine what it felt like for him being out there. Never know. Maybe it'll rain next year. Then we'll whip that course into shape just like we did at the Central Coast last year. Wadayareckon, JD? :-)

A blizzard of posts

How's this? Three posts in one day (although one was just a reprint of our Oz Ironman report from Cool Running). Anyhow, I thought that I should do a quick update on where my health is at.

My Doc rang back a couple of days after I saw him to say that he'd spoken to the Neurosurgeon, and he was going to stay back after his normal consulting time to see me. This disturbed me somewhat - I'm not keen on being of the slightest bit of interest to medical people. :-)

It all turned out happily - no surgery - and I just have to continue my non-running exercise. As of Thursday, I'm back and riding to work (I had a trial ride up at Port on Monday just to make sure). I covered the distance slightly faster than average, so that was good. I'm either walking or swimming every day (well, except yesterday and today :-) ). On Thursday, I did my slowest ever lap of the bay - 63 minutes - but I think that's as fast as I can possibly walk. On Wednesday, my fins were starting to hurt my feet, so I took them off after 900m and did 400 straight with no fins! This from a man who used to drown after 50. I told you Tiger Angel is a great teacher :-)

Summary? I'm totally comfortable in my back and legs, and I can walk and swim and ride. Only thing I can't do now is run, at least until I see Dr Pain again in a few weeks. He'd better have something nice to say (like... "yes, I see no reason why you shouldn't start running again"...), but I won't be holding my breath. He cares too much about my health to let me do anything toooo stupid :-)

Gnome

Striders Domain 10k

This week was busy.

Sunday - 80min run ( in between watching the swim and bike leg of ironman)
Monday - 30 min run ( 10 barefoot on beach) + some wts
Tuesday - abs + 40min bike session
Wednesday - 30 min walk + some wts + boxing session
Thursday - swim am and Runclub at night ( my first 3k time trial in 18months - 15.03)
Friday - did absolutely nothing for the first time in 4 weeks and my body ached all day!!
Saturday - Striders 10k at the Domain. Gnome was on marshalling duties.

Last month at Homebush I ran 58.48 but having done no hill work for over a year I didn't know what to expect on this course. I anticipated I would do about the same but was hopeful to dip into 57.5x. I worked out I needed to hit around 19.00min for each of the 3 laps. First hill I was stuffed and very scared at how I felt, 2nd hill was just as bad but I noticed I hit the 5k at 29.14 and this meant I was still on track. Third time up the hill I kept telling myself I was strong and then realized I was at the top turning for the steady incline. At the 8 k mark I felt really good and came home to finish in 57.04 ( second 5k - 27.50 ) for a 1.44 improvement on last month's 10k in spite of the wind and rain.

After drying off, we then enjoyed breakfast in Leichardt with Julia, Lorna (Owl) and Wayne (JD).

TA

Oz Ironman

Just back from Port after a wonderful weekend and a very pleasant amble back down the coast (I think we ate our way back to Sydney - eating sensibly starts again tonight ). We've never seen an Ironman before, so everything had a touch of magic and a load of emotion. We saw Rohan's excitement before the start, Hairyleg's disappointment on the sidelines, Auntie's steely determination through the run and Miners' calm acceptance of a less-than-hoped-for day.

The crowd's self imposed silence during the 'a capella' National Anthem sent shivers down my spine. I think that if everyone's nerves were already on edge before then, that just tipped it over. I liked Hamburglar's description of the piranah-like start. One of these day's someone's going to act like a sheep dog and do the entire swim leg running across everyone else's backs .

We scored expert commentary from QueenB and Tux while watching T1, then retired to breakfast with some of the CR crew. After suitably stuffing ourselves at a local cafe, we camped right at the turn into the bike entry and heard Miners being called through on the start of his third lap but we were too far away to cheer. It was a top spectating position. As well as being in the shade, the run leg passed right by us too. Thus we got to cheer all the CRs we could recognise (a sad absence of yellow and blue out there today folks, with the notable exceptions of Rohan and Frank) both coming in off the bike and out to the run.

One disadvantage of knowing so many people out there was that they inconsiderately spaced themselves out around the course so that there was always someone 'just ten minutes' away from coming past, so we didn't get to lunch till after 3pm. This spectating at IM is a hard gig! Some of you competitors should try it some time.

From then until late, tiger angel, Tux and I hung out on the waterfront at the 20/41k mark. Strange just how tired people look at the 224km point in a race - some staggering, some walking, some just trying to 'pick it up' for the last k and others moving smoothly like they were just on their Sunday long run. I loved seeing the smiles on the competitors' faces as they came through the groups of cheerers - I hope we managed to lift a few spirits!

We only saw Rohan and Auntie afterwards, but if they were anything to go by, then there was an absolute load of elation in town. Very happy campers indeed! Congratulations to all you CRs, you made it one helluva weekend.

CR5k Bunny

Early start on Saturday morning for the CR5k. I decided 27xx sounded good and discovered that Owl and Sista Chris were also keen for that. Brad, from Runclub was there for his first CR5k and decided to join us and Pipe (returning from injury) decided to hang in for as long as possible. We actually left at 28mins because we thought we might get mown down in the last k by the group targeting sub 16.

1k we did 5.27. This was looking good. 2k another 5.26, great. 3k, 5.27 , amazing. I started to pull away a bit here and Sista Chris came with me. 4k 5.22. At this point Chris moved ahead but I knew it was too early in the last k for me so just worked at holding the gap. About 250m from the end I picked it up and drew alongside and together we crossed the line for 26.58 (5.16 for last k). Absolutely amazed to take 57secs off last month and very happy to be heading in the right direction towards the old PBs.

Turns out I unwittingly acted as a bunny for Owl to chase and she managed a 16 sec PB. Good stuff :-)