I just wanted to give you a heads up that when it gets to Monday, February 18, and you tell everyone at work you’ve got Mondayitis and Monday sucks and the day is dragging on, your day won’t be more exhausting than Mike Allsop’s day.
And when it gets to Wednesday, February 20, and you’re all like “hump day, yay!” and “roll on Friday!” and stuff like that, your week still won’t have been as exhausting as Mike Allsop’s.
And when you get to Friday, February 22, and you’re all “I’ve earned this beer!” at Friday drinks with your workmates, you will not have earned that beer more than Mike Allsop’s.
So, 32 days from now, when you wake up and your eyes feel heavy and your bed feels too comfortable to leave, think about Mike Allsop and life won’t feel so exhausting anymore. He’ll be out of bed, running a marathon on the Falkland Islands. One of the seven marathons he will complete in seven different continents in just seven days.
Seven marathons. Seven continents. Seven days.
It’s as insane as it is inspiring (and if you’re a runner, a marathon in each continent is pretty much the ultimate item on your bucket list). On top of that, he’s doing it for a good cause, to raise money for KidsCan. Mike is aiming to raise $10,000 for the charity so, if you have a dollar or ten weighing in your pocket, drop it here.
He is no stranger to big adventures but the 777project will be his biggest challenge to date (and I’m not entirely sure how he’s going to top this one). In an estimated 7 days and 20 hours, he will fly all over the world and run marathons in: Antarctica (Falkland Islands), Chile (South America), Los Angeles (North America), London (Europe), Casablanca (Africa), Hong Kong (Asia), and finally Auckland (Australasia). I got tired just from typing this paragraph.
Mike has his itinerary online with the start times of each marathon so, if you are in any of these areas, maybe go hand him a drink and tell him he’s awesome.
The first time I ever entered a running event was two years ago, almost to the day. S. and I decided it was time to go from our little mid-week runs into more of a challenge and we signed up for the 12k version of the Wharf to Wharf version on Waiheke Island (and not just because we wanted an excuse to go to Waiheke Island). At the time, none of us had even run that far. It seemed like a big challenge, which really makes me think about how far we’ve come. We’ve entered dozens of events since then but Wharf to Wharf is the one that got me hooked onto crossing finish lines and so it has a special place in my heart (all together now: awwwww!).
Last year, a 24h flight delay in Las Vegas forced to to pull out of the event. I was at the airport in Vegas when S. texted me from the start line saying they were calling my name because I had signed up but failed to pick up my race pack and, even though I was in Vegas, my heart sank a little bit. I wanted to go back and run each one of those twelve kilometers again. And so today I did.
My memory of the course was, hmm, kind of a little bit distorted. I remembered that there were “a couple of hills”. My brain failed to remind that the whole course is in fact up and down a bunch of hills, with almost no flat areas. But it is beautiful. As in jaw-dropping breathtakingly go-tell-your-mother-she-needs-to-come-see-this kind of beautiful. So beautiful you don’t even care about the hills (much). It starts on the beach (like every run should start) and it ends on another beach (like every run should end). In the middle, just a whole lot of prettiness to distract you from the hills and the pain and the fact that you got up at 5:30AM on a Sunday and not many people would agree with you that that was a good idea.
I ended up bumping into people I knew and running it with more running buddies than I was expecting and even had the visit at the start line from a couple of friends who were staying on the island for the weekend. The social side of this event really is one of its strongest points (it’s a fairly small low-key event as far as races go but it brings together a really nice bunch of people, including adorable looking volunteers handing you water while wearing costumes).
But anyway. Holy ball of fire in the sky, it was hot. And muggy. Really stinking muggy. I supposed that’s as far as I’ll go talking about the weather. I’d complain about it if it had been too cold so I think I’ll just shut up now. It could actually have been much worse. The sun really only decided to come out to play once we crossed the finish line so hats off to whoever controls that stuff up there. Top work.
The other good news is that, unlike two years ago, I managed not to smash my iPod onto the ground right at the start line in Onetangi wharf (an iPod that was only 17 days old at the time and that lasted another year and a lot of running events but never got a new screen). The bad news is that the exercise-induced asthma symptoms I experienced earlier this year made a comeback. Assholes (yes, I’m attributing an adjective that somehow personifies a health symptom. It’s poetic. Just go with it). It awarded me some strange looks and “are you ok?” questions from passing runners and forced me to walk for a few hundred meters to start breathing normally again and convincing myself that no, I was absolutely not dying halfway up that hill. It also led me to make a mental note to add an inhaler to the list of things I’ll be carrying with me during the marathon.
Once I was over that little hiccup, the rest of the run was amazing. We crossed the finish line and headed straight to the water. Being able to do this is, in itself, a major reason to enter this event. More than that, I now consider the ability to go for a dip in the sea the new standard measurement by which all finish lines should be rated.
Santa came a little early for me this year and instead of what I’d asked for, he brought me a cold. Jerk. Anyway, he redeemed himself on Christmas Day, the first day in a week when I woke up without a sore throat and a nose full of snot (descriptive enough for you?) so now we’re back on speaking terms. (Love you, Santa! xoxo)
Since I had been laying low for a few days and was spending Christmas in one of the prettiest places in New Zealand, I thought a run would be the best way to work off the 439374 (approximate figure) Cadbury Favourites I’d eaten at about 2AM the night before (I take Christmas very seriously).
I failed to pick an appropriate time for a run and ended up starting at lunchtime, sweating bucket loads (you got over the snot part, you can get over the sweat too) in the short 6k around Turangi, from near the town centre to just past this bridge over the Tongariro River and back.
I managed to make some friends along the way like the stunning fellow you see above. Now, for some unknown reason, I’m nursing a sore knee so it looks like my only workout this Boxing Day will be unwrapping some more of these chocolates and getting up for second servings of Christmas desserts.
After feeding you all that crap about becoming a morning person just days ago, I woke up on Sunday really angry at my alarm. The stupid thing was going off and it wasn’t even 7AM. And did I mention it was Sunday? I was exhausted and woke up with a sore throat and a headache. And it was Sunday. I may have mentioned that. I really wanted to sleep. Until midday. Possibly 4pm. Instead, I dragged myself out of bed, put the bread slice in the toaster, turned the coffee machine on and proceeded to hate life and everything it comprised.
S. was also already up and we were getting ready to finally head north and run the Okura Bush Walkway, a run we had been talking about doing for months. We were both cranky for most of the way there, questioning why we were even doing it, if it was putting us in such a bad mood.
But then we got there and had these views and we weren’t so cranky anymore. Amazing what some nice scenery can do for you.
I had walked the 16k of the Okura Bush a couple of years ago but failed to remember that it included a stream crossing if you are running/walking the entire length of the walkway.
From Haighs Access Road, the Department of Conservation says walkers/runners have two options: 4.8k to Dacre Cottage (9.6k return) or 8k to Stillwater (16k return).
The spring tide this weekend meant that high tide was really high, and, being the organised little runners we are, we forgot to check the tides and managed to hit the stream just an hour before high tide. We crossed, with water already up to our knees, but after realising that we would not have time to run the 8k on the other side and loop back in time to avoid high tide, we decided to run back and make it a shorter run.
On a scale of “really dense confusing bush with tracks going off in every direction” to “are you kidding me? Not even Vera could get lost here”, this track is definitely an easy one. It is, however, far from flat. Note the description on the DOC site includes words such as “20 minute hill climb”, “the track drops down”, “then climbs”, “dropping quite steeply”… I think you get the point. It’s hard work for someone who loves nice flat courses like Lindsay Lohan loves Jagermeister – which is why I was more than happy to turn around at the stream crossing and only make it an 8k run. It may have been a short distance but it was definitely a good workout and the amazing scenery made it worth bitching about life before 7AM, proof that there’s nothing a good run and some beautiful scenery can’t fix.
Next time, though, I’ll try to do the whole responsible trail runner thing and check for tides and stuff. If I remember correctly, there is a whole lot more prettiness on the other side of that stream.
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.
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?
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*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.
Following the first instalment, here’s another list of interesting running-related articles I’ve come across recently, in between overdoses of the grumpy cat and the Ikea monkey memes.
Did I miss anything good? The internet is kind of big and, in between work, bathroom breaks and a few hours of sleep, there may have been something I missed. Fill me in!
This Christmas will be my third one in the Southern Hemisphere and, therefore, my third Summer Christmas. You’d think I’d be used to it by now but… nope. Nice warm weather in December will never make sense to me and a Summer Christmas still sounds like a big paradox.
Christmas has always been my absolute favourite holiday, even though it always used to take place in my least favourite season. I initially thought that perhaps combining Christmas and Summer would make my head explode with happiness but that hasn’t happened.
It’s not that I have a bad time over Christmas in Summer. It’s just that it doesn’t feel like Christmas, at all. Words always have a variety of feelings associated with them and, to me, Christmas means warm coats, short days, the smell of pumpkin and cinnamon and all the other ingredients of the traditional Christmas food we have back home.
Instead, for the last three years, I’ve been wearing shorts and going for walks on the beach. I know it sounds like a massive first world problem – poor wee Vera has to go to the beach over Christmas, boo hoo, yadda yadda yadda. I know. But, as nice as it is, it doesn’t feel the way it should.
Some things, however, make it all a bit better. I intend to fill the house with the smell of anything pumpkin-related, decorate the hell out of it (and spend December vacuuming pine needles off the rug or chasing the cat to make sure she doesn’t swallow the tiny ornaments she grabs from the tree), eat as many pieces of french toast as my body can handle (in Portugal we call them “rabanadas” and they’re a traditional Christmas dish), crank out the Mariah Carey (don’t be hater, nothing says Christmas like All I Want for Christmas is You) and take part in as many Christmas-related activities as I can.
Like yesterday. For the first time, I was happy to be going out for a run in the rain. It was time for another Auckland Santa Run. Last year, we’d had good weather for it but, this time, even though the temperature was warm, I had the rain to make it feel a little bit Christmassier (yes, that’s totally a word).
About 1400 people dressed up as Santa and ran the ~3k course in Auckland central in the rain (at the same time as other thousands of Santa runners did the same in different cities and towns across the country), all for a good cause. It was a short run but you should never underestimate the added difficulty of running in a santa suit (there was nothing breathable about that material, I tell you) – so, by the end of it, I definitely felt like I had worked enough for some french toast. I mean, rabanada.
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.
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, 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.
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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.
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.
Here I am, worrying about running 1 marathon months from now, thinking it’ll be my biggest feat ever. And just a few hours south from where I live, on the same island, is Michael Stewart, gearing up for his 500th marathon this coming Sunday.
Yep. Five hundredth. Take a second or ten to digest that.
He ran his first marathon 42 years ago and is currently sitting on marathon number 499. All going well this coming Sunday, 42 years to the day, he’ll cross the finish line of the his very special marathon – the Michael Stewart’s 500th Celebration Marathon, a 42.2km run from and to Pinehaven Community Hall in Upper Hutt.
Stewart, also known by some as Mad Mike or Rainbow Man, is known for his bright running gear and so the marathon has a “pink” theme. He will be running with a number of “100 Club” members – people who, like him, have run over 100 marathons.
This weekend, while I probably sleep in and then moan about having to go for a longer-than-normal run, Mad Mike, rubbish truck driver and marathoner extraordinaire, will be setting a southern hemisphere record.
If you’re from the region and keen to enter, it’s only $40 and promises to be a really special event. To sign up, you just need to fill out and post this form.
Click here to read more about the 60 year old from Lower Hutt putting us all to shame and don’t forget to send him some good vibes on Sunday.
super generic girl 