super generic girl

the awesomely average life of a girl like all others

Tag Archives: marathon training


by 1 Comment

The big 2012 highlights post everyone is writing too

 

I logged onto Facebook* yesterday morning (I swear it’s not the first thing I do when I wake up… not always, anyway) and it presented me with the option of viewing the highlights of my year, according to Zuckerberg’s fancy algorithms. My first realisation was that the year is, indeed, almost over. The second realisation is that this year was actually a pretty good one. Facebook got some stuff right – my cat’s birthday really is that big a deal – but it failed to mention others. So screw you, Facebook, how about  I decide what the highlights of MY year are?

Well, it turns out that, without fancy algorithms (or proper short-term memory), coming out with a “year in review” post is quite a bit of work. But it’s also a good way to get me to reflect on everything that has happened so bear with me here.

I ended 2011 with an early night in a bungalow on an island without electricity in Vanuatu. By the time New Zealand started letting off fireworks, I was asleep. In fact, I soundly slept my way into 2012, having spent the last evening of 2011 on top of a volcano spitting lava everywhere. That new year’s eve experience is so hard impossible to top that I haven’t even made any plans for this coming December 31. What’s the point? Ryan Gosling could kiss me at midnight and it would still pale in comparison to last year’s experience (sorry Ryan, I still love you).

I went ahead and spent the first day of 2012 with a kastom tribe on the island, making January 1 2012 the best January 1 in the history of January 1. A couple of days later, I flew back to New Zealand and, just a few days after that, it was off to Las Vegas, a trip where I got to see the opposite world of what I’d seen in Vanuatu. Also, my first time flying business class long-haul (full sized bed and unlimited alcohol on the plane? Yes, please).

February was a quieter month and was also the month I ran my first half marathon of the year, the Cathay Pacific Half Marathon, in Auckland. It was a great summer day and I was happy to be ticking off 1/4 of my half marathon goals for the year (little did I know I’d go beyond that goal in the end). March seems to have been a little less eventful on the running front (and I can’t remember what I was doing instead) but, by the end of the month, S. had convinced me to sign up for a 35k trail run in May. Shit was about to get real.

April was all about freaking out about May. It started with a bittersweet PR at the Whenuapai Half Marathon before a first (and non-official) off-road half marathon. I squeezed in a work trip to San Diego (where I got to run in both Balboa Park and along the city’s stunning waterfront) before returning to New Zealand and getting into full on trail running training mode. It was also in April that we decided we needed bigger motivation for this run and so we started fundraising for KidsCan. The response from people we know was amazing and we even got $20 beyond our goal, in spite of starting fundraising so late.

May came and, with it, the final stretch of the big training plan. And then it came – May 26, the big day. The anniversary of my move to New Zealand and the day of the biggest physical challenge I’d had to date, a 35k trail run with a heart-attack inducing elevation chart. It was every bit as amazing as I had hoped it would be. After that, I didn’t think the year could get much better. But of course it did.

The next month, we flew to Wellington to run the Wellington Half Marathon. It was the first time we flew on purpose for a race. The weather wasn’t fantastic and my body wasn’t exactly up for a long run that day but it was still a great experience. In August, it was time to finally head back to the trails and get some mud on our shoes. And our shorts. And our shirts. And our underwear. And everywhere else. It was great.

The really amazing month, the one I wait for every year, was September (I mean, rocktember). I got to finally fly home and see my family and friends again and, this time, the long way around, with the final leg of the trip being done by car (after two flights), via 13 countries in 6 days, in an epic European road trip I won’t forget any time soon.

In Lisbon, I entered my first urban trail race (and a night one, to make it even cooler) and loved every second of it. A week later, I ran the hardest and simultaneously most amazing half marathon of my life, along the waterfront of the city I was born and grew up in, with my family cheering me on. The finish line took a while to get to but the reward was grandma’s tomatada so life was pretty much as perfect as it gets right there and then. Back on this side of the world, later that same month, it was time to finally run the Auckland Half Marathon and cross the bridge in a bright green tutu. People were extra cheery thus scientifically proving that costumes are definitely the way to go.

Then November came and I didn’t think I’d be running any more half marathons this year. Turns out, I was wrong (I was shocked too). The ADRA half marathon in Auckland was a last minute decision but resulted in a PR and one of the easiest and most enjoyable half marathons I’ve ever run. I know the year isn’t over yet but I think I can safely say that I closed my half marathons cycle for the year, with a total of six official road half marathons run this year, two over my initial goal of running one every season.

It was also in November that S. and I decided it was time to bite the bullet and commit to bigger challenges. And so we registered for our first full marathon. Come next March, we’ll be seen running/walking/dragging our asses along the course of the Mountain the Surf Marathon in New Plymouth. It sounds maddening to me still but, then again, so did that 35k in May.

December has been a quieter month, with lots of training runs but less long events. We had an amazing time running from one coast of Auckland to the other and I chased my Christmas spirit in the rain in a santa suit.

There were a bunch of other awesome things that happened this year and I’ll probably write about them as soon as I find the time/patience/inspiration to do so on here (must. record. everything) but this is the recap of the stuff I managed to keep writing about as the year went by. Winning lottery has, apparently, been put on hold once again (your move, 2013) but, all in all, I’m happier and healthier than I was last year. Wasn’t that the whole point to begin with anyway?

***

*Speaking of Facebook, I decided it was time to stop annoying the hell out of my non-running friends with my running-related posts so created a page for the blog on there. It’s actually a secret plot to unleash my running geekery onto the world guilt-free, since I noticed I had to stop myself from sharing running-related links there (remember?) because, apparently, not everyone in the world is as interested in them as I am (whaaaat?). Check it out if you want, like if you like.

P.s.: For a really cool and almost tear-inducing video about this year, check out Google’s Zeitgeist 2012.


by 9 Comments

An unforeseen turn of events

20121210145230440

Do you ever have weekends when you feel like you can actually relax and have time to do everything you planned to do? For the longest time, I thought they were an urban myth, like blair witch or instant coffee that doesn’t make me want to puke. Turns out those weekends exist, though, and the secret to finding them seems to simply lie in getting my ass out of bed before noon.

This weekend, I decided I was not going to make any plans requiring any more than a five or ten minute advance notice. I fitted in shopping (more hours than I should have – sorry, credit card), quality time with the kitty, family skype time, coffee and magazine reading (the new issue of Runner’s World conveniently arrived in my letterbox on Saturday morning – a free issue from one of those coupons you can get in most event goodie bags), and a cookie baking extravaganza.

More importantly, I ran 3 times in the last 2 days, and 4 times in the last 3 days even, since I also ran a 5k on Friday morning before work.  Out of those 4 times, two of them were morning runs. I didn’t get a super long run in like I had expected (12k was the longest distance the watch recorded this weekend, and it included a couple of kilometers of walking). It didn’t matter, though. I’m still pretty happy to have gotten some kilometers under my belt. The hardest step is the one out of the door yadda yadda kind of thing, you know. My laundry pile has never had as many running clothes but I’ve also never felt so motivated about this whole marathon training thing.

I blame the sun. And also, I blame all this getting out of bed at the crack of dawn thing I’ve been doing. It dawned on me the other day (see what I did there? Hmm? Hmm?) that I have only slept past 9:30AM once this year (last weekend), and that one time was planned. I wanted the feeling of spending the whole morning in bed back again. And you know what was weird? I didn’t like it. I felt like I had just wasted a whole lot of time doing nothing. This is the same person that up until a couple of years ago would never get out of bed before 11 on a weekend, unless there was a very good reason to do so (and there were very strict criteria to define what “a very good reason” consisted of, excluding basically everything except for the apocalypse).

This Sunday, for example, I got out of bed at 6AM to run. There was no running event with a set time at stupid o’clock or anything, just me wanting to get a run in before the sun was too high up. I got to run before a lot of people were even out of bed and so the whole day was freed up to do other stuff. Turns out “other stuff” ended up including more running and I couldn’t resist another run in the evening, as dinner simmered away.

So this is awkward. It looks like all this running may have accidentally turned me into a morning person. I still dislike getting out of bed but a bulldozer no longer has to hit the walls of the bedroom for me to actually get up – especially if there’s running to be done. See you out there before 7AM sometimes. Apparently, it won’t kill me.


by 6 Comments

That morning I ran from one side of the country to the other (well, sort of)

The face may say "I'm excited so let's run" but the reality was more like "it's cold so let's run!"

The face may say “I’m excited so let’s run” but the reality was more like “it’s cold so let’s run!”

A couple of months ago, I watched the video shot by Andrew Evans (National Geographic Traveler’s Digital Nomad) of his run across Liechtenstein. Coincidentally, I watched it just days after I had driven across Liechtenstein (during an amazing European road trip I really should tell you more about one of these days) and had one of those I-wish-I-had-thought-of-that-myself moments. Liechtenstein is a tiny country and one of the few where someone like me can actually run the length of it in one go so I was a bit bummed about not having thought of that.

But never mind. On Sunday, S. and I sort of did that. Well, not really. Let me explain. New Zealand can get really narrow in some points. Conveniently enough, one of those points is right near where we live which means we got to run from one side of the country to the other, technically, in what was only a 16k run.

coasttocoast1

I made a sweet, sweet illustration in MS Paint to scientifically prove we ran from one side of the country to the other.

The Auckland Coast to Coast Walkway is an official walk established and maintained by the city council, that takes walkers (or, in our case, runners) from the Manukau Harbour (Onehunga) to the Waitemata Harbour (Viaduct), on the other side of the city (and the island). Along those 16k, whether you’re walking or running, you get a really good taste for what Auckland really is all about. Boring suburbs, yes, some of that. But also an amazing range of great parks and reserves, extinct volcanoes, historic buildings, etc.

Then realised the thick pink lines in that image covered evidence of water on both sides so used all my skills to create yet another masterpiece.

Then realised the thick pink lines in that image covered evidence of water on both sides so used all my skills to create yet another masterpiece, this time zooming in on the map a bit more. SO MUCH TALENT.

The course itself is fairly well marked by blue signs with arrows (if you’re going from Onehunga to the Viaduct, which is the way we went) or yellow arrows if you choose to start from the Waitemata Harbour side. There were only two or three occasions when there wasn’t a sign telling us which way to turn so we sort of had to take a guess. Luckily, the signs were not far apart and, surprisingly, we never got lost along the way. The arrows also tell you where you should cross the streets but I’m not entirely sure you should take their advice every single time (some of them seemed to have been placed in random spots, away from traffic lights or crossings). Other than that, the route was really well chosen, leading us through reserves whenever there was one nearby, and up and down special places like One Tree Hill, Mount Eden and the Auckland Domain.

Not being great fans of routes that loop around and force us to see us the same things twice, we were pretty pleased with this run. There was always something nice to look at and 16k was an easy enough distance, only made slightly more difficult by the elevation of the terrain in certain areas (but that’s only a worry if you have enough will-power to run every single hill, which we don’t).

So there you have it. From one side of the country to the other. Another training run down, about a bazillion to go.

***

Not completely unrelated, there’s a guy who’s not cutting any corners and can actually claim to be running the length of the entire country, top to bottom, rather than across one of its narrowest parts. Dan Burgess is just about finished with his epic running adventure from Bluff (down the far South) to Cape Reinga (right at the very top). He is raising money to aid Parkinson’s UK and Cystic Fibrosis NZ and if you’d like to help his fundraising efforts, you can do so through here or here.


by 9 Comments

ADRA half marathon recap – the last minute PR

A sunrise. I don’t witness these things often but I’m told they happen every day and not just on race days.

YOU GUYS! I think I’ve got it. The secret to running a really good race can sometimes be a lot less to do with preparation, training and tapering and a lot more to do with just chilling the heck out and heading into it without much planning.

Well, maybe. Don’t listen to me, ok? My only doctorate is in kitty cuddles and even that one is just honorary. But the fact is that the experience from last weekend showed me exactly that and I’m going with empirical knowledge here. So let’s recap, shall we?

I headed over to the Auckland Domain on Saturday to walk with Kim Allan (an experience I will hopefully be posting about in the next few days, once I can come up with the right adjectives to describe her epic feat). I wasn’t the only one there. Kim had the support of lots of other people, runners and non-runners, and, for a few hours, we all became our own little group of friends. One of the guys I was talking to mentioned the ADRA half marathon that was going to be on the following day in Mission Bay. I had read about it but decided against it a couple of weeks before. However, as he started telling me more about how nice a course it was and how the weather looked like it’d be perfect for it, I started feeling the bug bite. Knowing I absolutely had to get out of the house for a long run on Sunday anyway, as part of my less than stellar marathon training, I figured having some extra motivation wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Living in Auckland sometimes makes you forget not everyone can run alongside views like this one. Volcanoes are awesome.

On paper, it wasn’t a brilliant idea but that’s never stopped me before. I’d run 4 times that week and ended up walking 16km that Saturday (and getting sunburnt in the process). Tapering was non-existent. The only thing I had time to do, as far as preparation for a race goes, was a pasta meal for dinner on Saturday night, just in case. I didn’t even know for sure whether I’d be able to run it. Registrations had closed online so my only chance was to drive there at OMG o’clock on Sunday morning and check if I could register on the day. So I inhaled my pasta, used the potential half marathon as an excuse to have a bucket load of ice cream and set my alarm for 5AM (when 5AM was only about 5 hours away).

I thought to myself that if the alarm went off and I didn’t feel up for it, there’d be plenty of other half marathons to run and I could still go for a long run later on in the day. But then 5AM came around and I jumped out of bed with the usual race-day excitement. I left home while it was still dark and crossed fingers that they’d still take my registration. Of course the title of this post alone tells you they did and, at 7AM, I had my bib pinned on my shirt and was lining up at the start line with a bunch of other runners. My kind of sunday morning!

The route followed Auckland’s waterfront from Mission Bay to St Heliers and back to the Port (where we looped around back to Mission Bay) and was similar to the Cathay Pacific half marathon I ran earlier this year. There were only a couple of hills at the start (Cliff Road and I have a love-hate relationship but only in the sense that I love to hate it) but most of the course was nice and flat. The stunning weather was a welcome gift too, especially since Auckland has this habit of giving us a good week only to then present us with a stupidly wet weekend.

There were some times when I felt the tiredness that comes with not tapering but I was feeling strong enough to know I could finish. When I got close to the 16km mark, I realised I had a chance to get a personal record on this one. I got a little too excited about it and considered my chances of a sub-2h but quickly dismissed it. As nice as the course was, my legs felt heavy and tired (handy tip: do not walk 16km in the sun the day before running 21km) and I was not doing my best at pacing myself either. I was just happy with the possibility of beating the 2:05 I had been sitting on since the Whenuapai half marathon back in April.

I swear not all photos of myself have me in running clothes soaked in sweat. No, really.

And I did beat it. 2:03:06 is not quite the sub-2h I keep chasing but I am now 2 minutes closer to it then I was before this last minute decision to run this race. It was also a pretty good little confidence boost for marathon training. I celebrated the best possible way, by having a nap, and now I’m preaching the benefits of not over-thinking (or even thinking) running events and just going for it on the day. Maybe there is some truth to Nike’s slogan after all.


by 5 Comments

The importance of saying no

Cheesecake for lunch. Not the healthiest option but definitely one of the prettiest.

I started the week off on the right foot, running both of Monday and on Tuesday. No long runs, just a couple of post-work 5k, but enough to make me feel on top of things.

I was all on track for a three for three on Wednesday but then, instead, I got home from work and ate a mini Whittaker’s chocolate bar, nearly a whole bag of Coles pigs lollies, some salt & vinegar chips (I don’t even like salt & vinegar chips) and drank a glass of chocolate milk. Then after that, I went out to dinner with friends and tried on a few tapas, including chips and fried chicken, before moving to a different restaurant for Tiramisu. I don’t often report on my meals but this binge eating session was a little too crazy not to share, especially if you consider it was an alternative to running. Life – I’m doing it wrong.

Anyway, I digress. While out with my friends last night, one of them pointed out that I’m always agreeing to things and end up double and triple-booking myself and running out of time to do the things I actually really want to be doing (sometimes what I really want is to be out running, other times it’s simply to go home and play dead on the couch until the cat starts to worry). Basically, my friend worries that I’m a bit of a doormat and says I need to learn to say no. He’s right. Establishing priorities is not one of my strongest skills (unless you’re reading this because you want to hire me to help you establish priorities and you want to pay me quadruple figures in which case disregard what I just wrote, I’m awesome at it).

My marathon training plan has been sitting in the background waiting for me to have time for it. I’ve been squeezing in runs in between other commitments when, sometimes, I should be squeezing those other commitments in between runs. Running can’t become my number one priority (unless someone wants to pay all my bills for me), but from now until marathon day, it needs to be pretty damn close to that.

Training your body for something it is not yet ready to do is not something you can put off and then cram into a week or two at the last minute. I ran a shameful 7.5km last week. In the entire seven days of the week combined. I am now one week closer to that marathon and that is time I will not be able to recover.

So I’m sorry if I can’t make your breakfast/lunch/afternoon snack/dinner/drinks thingy. I’m sure it’ll be super lovely and I’ll totally miss out but I need to be out clocking up those kilometers, if I’m going to survive this thing in March. I may have to just catch the tail end of your meal (I’m very helpful with those few bites of dessert you couldn’t force yourself to finish) but if you are reading this, there’s a big chance you know how important this is and so you’ll understand.

But enough feeling sorry for myself. This morning, mainly driven by guilt over last night’s food antics, I got out of bed with 40 minutes to spare and decided to go for a run before work. I can’t explain to early risers how hard this is for me but suffice to say it’s only happened 3 or 4 times in the last couple of years.

Free fitness equipment along the path near home. Everyone’s excuses are now gone.

I ran my usual route close to home, with a couple of laps of the nearest reserve. The city council has recently installed some fitness equipment along the path which had the side benefit of making the park feel safer even after dark, with more people staying there to use the equipment after hours. I noticed last week during an evening run that I felt much safer running a couple of extra laps after sunset while people were still hanging around the area. So yay for tax money being put to good use.

So, to sum up, cheesecake is awesome, running in the morning won’t kill me, and I need to learn to sometimes say no and go for a run instead. Noted.


by 4 Comments

How Lord of the Rings and VFX relate to marathon training (at least in my head)

Well, if we’re going to talk about numbers, this week was a massive catastrophe. Good thing we’re not going to talk about numbers then, or else I’d have to admit to you that I didn’t get anywhere close to the goals I had set up for myself. Among the reasons I didn’t run nearly as much as I should have this week I include: work commitments (those bills aren’t gonna pay themselves, apparently), meteorology (can’t control the weather, amirite?) and just overall laziness. You know, the usual. And yes, I am feeling stupidly guilty about it but guilt won’t really get me running any faster or longer so I’ll just harden up and get over it now.

I did put together a bit of a training plan with S. on Monday evening (while not running because of the rain) so that’s gotta count for something. I then flew to Wellington for work on Thursday and, on Friday afternoon, managed to drag myself to the path along the waterfront (part of the route of the half marathon I ran there back in June). It was a lovely, albeit fairly short, run, during which I only stopped a couple of times very briefly for the photos you see here (Instagram is my new excuse to take breaks during runs).

The conference that took me to Wellington ended on Saturday night with a gala dinner at Te Papa Museum (hands down my favourite museum in the country). They had a guest speaker come and give a bit of a speech after the awards ceremony (or was it before? I don’t know, it was in between wine). The speaker was Wayne Stables, a name that didn’t ring any bells to me but must make serious Lord of the Rings fans’ hormones go a little nutty. He’s the big visual effects guru at Weta Digital, Sir Peter Jackson’s film company.

It was during his talk to the conference guests that I realised two things:

1. I need to immediately take a weekend off to re-watch all Lord of the Rings (including the bits during which I fell asleep in my first and, so far only,  attempt)

2. I’m so obsessed with running and marathon training I’ll find a link between that and anything else in life.

All the man did was stand there for a few minutes talking about his amazing work in movies such as Lord of the Rings, Tin Tin and Avatar. My brain related pretty much each one of his sentences to running. One of his key messages was that working with massive visual effects productions means you have a lot of really big overwhelming challenges – like, for example, creating all the vfx for the battle of Helm’s Deep in LOTR or the super long continuous shot that was the chase scene in Tin Tin. There are a million little details that have to come together to create those scenes. If you think of the whole scene as one big thing, you’ll be completely stumped and overwhelmed by all the details that need looking after (stuff we don’t even think of as we watch the movie, such as cloth motion or the most realistic way to get water falling). So the key, he says, is to break those big challenges into tiny little ones and look at each detail at a time, rather than having the whole big picture in mind.

D’ya get it? D’ya? D’ya? Don’t tell me I’m the only one who made an immediate correlation to training for a 42.2km long run (not to mention that the marathon is only part of a much larger goal to run a 75k trail run, but that’s a whole new blog post). It’s all about breaking the massive challenge into little ones. Simple and yet genius. I went back to my hotel room later on having run a grand total of zero kilometers that day but with the distinct sensation that sitting through that talk  represented some sort of progression in my training.

Probably bullshit. I better get my ass on the road and run because, at this rate, special effects really are the only way I’m ever going to be seen crossing that finish line.


by 8 Comments

Marathon training – week 1

It still feels a bit weird to talk about marathon training with the word ‘half’ preceding it.

It also feels a bit weird to talk about marathon training for this week when my average mileage was even lower than what I was doing back when I was training for the 35k trail. Still, every week from now until marathon day will be a training week and even if I waste it all on a giant caramel and cinnamon cake (which I may or may not have just done), you’ll get all the details until you’re so sick of it you contemplate disconnecting your internet at home so you don’t accidentally stumble upon this blog anymore.

But until you do that, I’ll be here to give you the exciting marathon training report, week by week, no matter how uneventful it actually is.

Like this first one. This week, I ran a grand total of 25k (divided in 2x 10k and 1x 5k sessions). Nope, nothing else. No gym visits, no other workout, unless slicing up the aforementioned giant caramel and cinnamon cake can be considered a workout. So there you go, weekly report done. Shameful, isn’t it?

Week 2 starts tomorrow and I decided it would be a good idea to set myself some goals for the week, to keep me on track:

– Run at least 42.2k in total. A marathon in a week shouldn’t be too hard to achieve. I’m flying down to Wellington on Thursday and I think that flat waterfront is going to help me with the mileage.

– Return to the gym. It’s been longer than I’m prepared to admit.

– Sit down with S. and draw up a proper training plan for both of us (okay, this is sort of cheating because we’ve already agreed to do this)

– Make at least one of the runs this week a morning one. Now I feel like I’m pushing my luck.

– Book an appointment with my GP to check on a recurring pain on my knee every time I run. If I’m going to do this, I better make sure I don’t completely destroy my poor bones in the process.

This should be enough to keep me out of trouble.


by 9 Comments

42.2

Every time I run a half marathon, there’s a voice inside of me that wonders about a few important questions. Some common ones include “why did I add this song in my running playlist?”, “did I really think eating half a chocolate torte the night before the race was a good idea?” and, more importantly, “why am I not in bed like normal people?”

A few minutes after each half marathon, however, I wonder about different things. Lately, I’ve been finding myself questioning whether, with a little more training, I could push it further and keep going for a little while longer.

So it’s time to go a little further. More specifically, twice as far. Less than four months from now, I will be at the start line of my very first full marathon. It was all Stacey’s idea (and I’m putting this in writing here especially in case it all turns to custard). Yes, the same Stacey that had the 35k trail run idea. We had been talking about how exciting it’d be to enter a marathon in an exotic location in some faraway land. After one glass of wine too many, I even emailed the NZ-based travel agent responsible for getting kiwi runners into the Great Wall Marathon.

A couple of days later, Stacey emailed me saying she had found the marathon for us and added a link to the Mountain to Surf Marathon, in New Plymouth. Okay, so not really what I had in mind when we talked about exotic faraway locations (unless, of course, you’re outside New Zealand). But:

1. It’s not in Auckland. One of the things we had discussed was how hard it would be to run a full marathon along a place we know too well. We need the excitement that comes with running in a new location.

2. It involves a road trip. Or a flight. Whichever is the cheapest. Either way, exciting travel-related arrangements to be made.

3. It’s mostly downhill and flat. This could also very well turn out to be a bad thing, since downhills are so tough on the knees, but I definitely prefer them to steep uphills.

4. It starts in Mount Taranaki and ends right on the edge of the island by the Tasman Sea. So, beautiful scenery guaranteed.

5. Registration was only $70. Sadly though, there doesn’t seem to be a finisher’s medal. I might just have to add “marathoner” to my email signature and take that as my badge of honour since kiwis are clearly not into the whole medal deal. If they ask for my bib back at the end of the race, though, as it has happened before, I’ll lose my shit.

Mount Taranaki, a photo taken back in 2009, back when my hair was longer and my marathon dreams were non-existent.

We agreed to sign up for it on pay day but I didn’t trust myself not to chicken out before then and so went ahead and signed up straight away. From now on, the clock is ticking and it’s time to get training. According to the marathon training programme I downloaded from the event’s website, I’m already behind. Training will, of course, be an essential part of my life in the next four months. I’ll probably talk about it a bit all the freaking time so, dear friends, if there’s a holiday you’ve been meaning to take or any plans that involve not having contact with me, now is the time to put those into action.

It’s good to be back in training mode with a major goal in mind. Not to dismiss half marathons in the least (they’re still a challenge), but it was time to move on from those into something more, especially since I can’t bring myself to worry about speed so training to get faster never ends up happening.

Chocolate milk and a cinnamon cookie – an essential part of marathon training.

To prove I’m taking marathon training seriously, the day after signing up I headed to the newly opened Moustache Milk & Cookies bar in Auckland to inaugurate marathon training season with a cookie.

Just kidding. I started marathon training the day I signed up. With a chocolate doughnut. So you know I mean business.


by 18 Comments

2012 running goals – part 1

Last Friday, I went for my first run since the half-marathon in Kerikeri.  I hadn’t actually intended to stop running for a whole six days but the whole week just flew by and it kind of just happened. Today is day five of yet another hiatus (after my last run on Saturday).

Can you even call it a hiatus if it’s only been five days? I guess not but too late now, not hitting that backspace key.

As bad as it sounds, this is still better than the period post-Taupo-half-marathon when I stopped running for quite a while longer (don’t blame me. Blame winter. That’s what I’m doing).

Entering a race every month this year has helped create a running habit and keep me motivated to continue training and I’m afraid that, if one run ends and I don’t have another in the pipeline, I might just get a little too lazy (something I seem to have a natural talent for).

After crossing the finish line in Kerikeri, S. and I lied on the grass and started drawing up the plan for what should happen next. Three days that, we signed up for a short fun run in December (and this will really be fun as it will even include costumes!) and came up with a list of runs we want to do next year. We’ve got three running events planned for 2012 so far and intend to enter a few more (the whole one running event per month idea proved quite successful this year so maybe it’s best if we carry on with that formula).

I want to take this very seriously and actually stick to training plans next year, contrary to what I’ve done this year.  So, to make it official, here are my 2012 running resolutions (part 1 only, as we still have to choose other running events for the rest of the year):

  1. Return to Waiheke Island in January and run the 12km Wharf2Wharf again. It was the first running event we ever entered, last January, and we didn’t know what to expect at all. I’m super curious to go back and see what it’ll feel like this time.
  2. Run four half marathons
  3. Run the Cathay Pacific Half Marathon in Auckland (in February)
  4. Run the Rotorua Half Marathon (in April)
  5. Run a half marathon in two hours (or less)
  6. Run an average of 100km a month
  7. Do more cross-training
  8. Speaking of those programmes, find a good one and stick to it.
  9. Run the Kerikeri Half Marathon again (and beat my current time for that course)
  10. Choose a full marathon to do in 2013

So there you have it. I’ve got put my running shoes where my mouth is. Okay, that sounded gross. Backspace. You get the point.