Disco Lights, Spiders Webs and How To Get To Sesame Street.

Yesterday was our last time running trails for the next few months. We're in the middle of autumn (even though the temperatures still feel like it's summer) and it's quite dark when we meet at the beginning of the session.

It was dark enough yesterday for Coach Chris to encourage us to wear lights so we'll be more visible to cars, bikes and each other. Being the coach, he has special lights - not just the one you can get from Kmart for the back of your bike. No, his light has a bank of separate lights and different flashing modes. And being that it was the last trail run for the season, he'd put it on disco mode.

It was a little disconcerting for those running directly behind him. We're used to the steady on-off-on-off style of flashing. We're all hard-core trail runners (stop laughing Chris). We don't need fancy. We disdain fancy. We openly mock fancy - which I pretty much did when I said it looked like there was a party going on in his pants. I'm sure no one would have taken that the wrong way.

Our intrepid and fearless leader was out in front forging a path through the thick forest. Okay, that might be an exaggeration but there was a couple of trees. And where there's a couple of trees there's usually a couple of spiders. A couple of industrious spiders who've been hard at work all night creating a lovely home for themselves - that Coach Chris promptly and carelessly destroyed.

It was at that moment that the disco lights became relevant.

Okay, that might be a little mean. Coach Chris looks nothing like the man in that GIF. A man who runs up to 200k a week will never be as heavy as that. So I found a more relevant one.

And that made this picture that he sent last night funnier than it should have been.

I mentioned before that our Coach is a fearless and intrepid leader but I forgot to also mention that he is also tenacious. He decided that he'd find his way to Sesame Street by hook or by crook. And he did it by the only means that a man of the modern generation has at his disposal. He asked a woman. And the woman he asked had all the answers and told him where to go.

I have Siri set to the male voice and when I asked him he had absolutely no idea where we were in the first place. 

Looks like I'll have to change my Siri setting.

2014 - The Year Of The Rollercoaster.

I wrote in my last post about my irrational fears about travelling to races. So it seems even crazier that I spend some of my day yesterday doing this.

Yes, I've registered for the Melbourne Marathon again. Because there's no better time to do something scary than when you're already scared. This time I'm hoping will be a hell of a lot better than last. It could hardly be any worse.

Today I'm planning on registering for the other races that are on my mental to-do list - the 10k at the Gold Coast and the Jetty to Jetty half. 

I told my husband all this last night and he had difficulties keeping his eyes from rolling to the back of his head.

"So you're telling me that you're getting nervous about going down to Canberra BUT you're signing up to other races?"

Yeah I had no answer to that except that one day, if I do enough travelling and racing, I might not get nervous at all. There was a time when this actually was my reality - before I got sick and knew just how weak my body could be. I have a clear memory of standing on a start line with my heart rate in the 50s and actually feeling relaxed. I figure that if it happened once it can happen again.

Here's how my racing year's looking so far -

April - Canberra Half

May - Great Ocean Road Half

July - Gold Coast 10k

         Jetty to Jetty Half

August - Sunshine Coast Half

October - Melbourne Marathon

2014 looks like it's going to be an 

I hope I manage to ride with a smile on my face like these girls.

And not with a mouth full of chunder.

I'm Going To Do Something Wild And Outrageous

I'm doing something a little bit wild and outrageous soon.

I'm running my first race of the year in less than a fortnight. Yeah, I know - nothing wild or outrageous there.

But I'm running this race interstate. Again - neither wild nor outrageous, especially considering that the place I'm going to is Canberra and the wildest thing that happens down there is the bickering between political parties in Parliament House.

The reason that this trip is wild and outrageous is that I'm doing it BY MYSELF.

No, I didn't accidentally press caps locked at the end of that sentence. It's capitalised because travelling by myself is a big, fat, hairy deal to me.

I know that to most of you it's not something that would bother you. It's such a non-event that doing it doesn't even make you blink. But I'm not like most people. I like to think I'm special. Or should I say 'special'?

I have a interesting history with plane travel. And a lot of it involves vomiting. On the plane. And in the terminal. Some has involved being wheeled around in a wheelchair. Being upgraded to business class because I seemed so sick. All because I was nervous.

Sometimes my anxiety has me teetering on a fine wire between normality and insanity. Okay, I might have exaggerated that just a little bit but I'll do what I have to to justify using cute doggy GIFs.

I am slightly better at aeroplane travel than I used to be. Thanks in part to mind-altering drugs. I don't even actually have to take the tablets to cope. As long as they're in my handbag I can pretend that getting on a plane is really no big deal. I can sit relaxed in my chair and just go with the flow.

But if I'm going to be totally honest and before you all get too impressed with my feats of courage, I have to admit that I'm not going to be totally on my own. There's a small contingent of GaleForcers heading down. One of them, Elio, even gave me his flight details so I could be on the same flights after he heard that I get a wee bit nervous about flying. And on Saturday I came clean with the whole vomiting-wheelchair riding extent of it. I've got to hand it to him - I didn't even see him flinch. Either he knows a lot of other crazy ladies or his Mum brought him up so well that he's too polite to show his horror.

The reason that I like to travel with family is that they already know the extent of the crazy that happens when I get nervous. And they have to put up with it because they love me. Or maybe it's because I cook and clean for them, but I choose to think it's because they love me. Letting non-blood relatives in on the act is a totally different challenge. But I've often said that GaleForce is like my other family so I guess it's time that this other family met their crazy aunt. I'm hoping that we have so much fun on the weekend that I won't have time to be nervous. I'm hoping that it's so much fun that Bronwyn Bishop sanctions us for laughing too much (sorry I couldn't resist the political reference that only Aussie's who are current with their news will get).

And my goals for the race? To run without any pharmaceutical assistance. That's a big enough goal for the moment.

How A Run Can Suck But Still Be Amazing.

Sometimes a run can be awful and great at the same time.

Yesterday's run was.

I'd missed Wednesday's run because the weather was so awful. We've had some pretty heavy rain in the last few days. My throat's been sore and I've been putting in long hours of work - it just seemed like the sensible thing to stay in bed, get a bit more sleep and stay dry. I went through the usual internal argument at 4:15am and debated the pros and the cons. And I must have drifted back off to sleep mid-argument (proving my point that debates are boring) still holding my alarm clock because the next thing I knew the clock had crashed to the floor and it wasn't working. The Gods had spoken - no alarm means that I'm not supposed to run and who am I to defy the Gods?

Thursday is Hills day and there was a very strong chance that the trails would be in bad shape after all the rain. We were warned that the session might be cancelled but thinking isn't my strong point at 4:45am so I got up like I usually would, made the bed, had my banana and got dressed all before I checked on my phone. Yes, the trails were bad and the session was cancelled and our instructions from Coach Chris were to go back to bed. Of course it was too late for that. I was dressed for a run so I was going to have a run. What a defiant little runner I am.

Right from the start it felt hard. My legs were heavy and didn't want to move. I told myself it was going to just be an easy run and I could cut it short if I didn't start to feel better. And then I went through all the reasons that it was feeling so hard just to reassure myself that this wasn't the start of a trend. My throat was sore. I'd done leg work the day before. I've been working lots of hours and haven't had a full day off in 3 weeks. I'd had a very disturbed night's sleep the night before. No wonder I wasn't feeling it.

A couple of kilometres in, my MP3 ran out of battery. It was around that point that I remembered that I'd meant to charge it a week ago. Oops. And it was at the first water stop that I realised that I hadn't worn my spibelt so I had no fuel. That wouldn't matter if my run was short but this one was supposed to be 16k and I'll generally have a honey or two when I run that far. I was really starting to wish that I'd been a good GaleForcer and done what the coach had said. It wouldn't kill me to make the bed twice in one day but running 16k might.

But then a little miracle happened. The skies started to lighten. First there were pink streaks in the clouds. Then the pink turned to orange and yellow and the whole sky exploded with colour. Of course I didn't have my phone with me to take a photo. So I captured them in my head - the city as a silhouette with an amazing technicolour backdrop, colours reflected in plate glass windows, silhouetted runners in single file across the bridge. It didn't matter that my legs were heavy any more. My spirit was soaring.

Luckily some of my squad mates remembered their phones so I could share just how beautiful it was. Thanks Jess!!

Of course I didn't cut the run short. I couldn't bear to miss out on the magnificent light show. I kept on till I got to the Botanical Gardens then ran around the ponds (another of my favourite places) and got to see the water lilies in full bloom. And then I was on my way back home and the run had two last gifts to give to me - the cormorant sitting on the log in the river trying to sun himself. 

And the smiling runner whose face spelled out just how much he was enjoying his run. I figure he'd just started to be that happy.

Honestly yesterday's running sucked but the run was amazing. 

A Pretty Big Carrot.

We all need a carrot sometimes.

I decided that I needed one yesterday. And not the grated stuff that I put on my salad at lunch.

No, I needed a real carrot. An incentive to get me through the next few weeks of work-hell. So I've made some plans. I'm going away for a race weekend.

Not just any race weekend. I'm going to steal two days off work - only fair because work has stolen more than two days off me - and have an extended long weekend. Down in Victoria. Where my eldest and his girlfriend has just moved to. And my #2 is going to come as well.

I'm a wee bit excited.

And I got even more excited when I Googled for pictures to put here and show you why I'm excited.

Beautiful, isn't it?!!

It's the Great Ocean Road Marathon down in Victoria. Josh and I will be doing the half (which is actually 23k. The marathon is 45k). 

Procrastination made the hunt for accommodation a little tricky. Especially since there'll be four of us. But I managed to find somewhere just out of Apollo Bay where the race finishes. It's a point-to-point race.

I'm not sure what I'm more excited about - running in such a spectacular part of the world or seeing Sam. One thing's for sure, the combination of the two is a pretty big carrot.

But I Was So Sure.

Being so work-busy has had me making a couple of mistakes this week.

The first involved a catch-up coffee with a friend. I'd made the date before things got so out of hand. But Chris is one of my oldest friends - in length of friendship, not age - and I wasn't going to cancel even if it meant I had to work on the weekend. And I'd planned to do that anyway.

I'd committed the time and the place to memory. 10:00am at La Diva. And I worked frantically all morning to be ready for that time. I left home just a little early and arrived just before 10. Chris wasn't there but she's always so punctual that I knew that she wouldn't be long. But after 10 minutes the doubts that had been prickling me all morning resurfaced.

They started when I was drying my hair and the conversation in my head went a little like this.

"It's 10:00 that we're meeting - or is it 10:30?"

"I'm pretty sure it's 10:00. But I might just check my emails"

"Damn - I've turned the computer off. If I turn it back on I'll be late. Or early? I wish I'd written it in my diary."

"Maybe it's in my work diary"

""Wish I'd written more than 'Coffee with Chris'"

"Stop over-thinking. Trust your memory - you might be 51 but your brain still works"

So sitting by myself at La Diva I convinced myself that not only did I have the time wrong but I probably had the place wrong too. It was time to swallow my pride and reveal my lack of organisation to Chris. I sent her a text and when she called back I was happy to know that I'd at least gotten the place right.

We had a lovely coffee together and actually pre-planned our next. And this time I put it in my phone. With an alert so there's no way I can get the time or place wrong.

And when I got home I checked on the email before deleting it. I'd been right. My memory was vindicated - for this time at least.

The second mistake came Saturday - long run day.

When I get my running program for the month I look at it and commit it to memory. It's not hard - there's really only 4 long-run distances to worry about because the other sessions are generally speed session (which Coach Chris tells us about on the morning), hill session (again we're told what we're doing when we arrive) and a mid-week, mid-length run of 12-16k.

I knew I had a 24k run on Saturday so had arranged to meet with the stupid-early group. We did our 24k without mishap (but not without a mis-start thanks to the drunk man in the taxi who had to throw up unexpectedly and voluminously). And when I got home I put all the details onto my training sheet. That's when I realised that maybe my self-satisfaction about my memory the previous day had been a little too smug.

There it was in black and white - 20k. Heaven knows where I'd hallucinated the 24k from. At least it'll stand me in good stead for my first half marathon of the year.

Seems like I can't trust my memory after all.

Less Panic. More Work.

It happens every year.

A day. Or two. Or a whole week. Where I realise I've taken on too much work and I'm never going to get it done before the dead line and how can I be that stupid because this was the year that I was going to be in control.

I'd decided on some strict rules for this year to stop all the usual craziness from happening. I wasn't going to take any individual orders. And I haven't. I even told my sister that I couldn't make a costume for her daughter. I know - that possibly makes me the worst sister of all time. And I decided that I wouldn't take any orders from interstate (yep, I broke that rule). But despite patchy implementations of these new rules I find myself in exactly the same position as I do every year - too much to do and too little time.

So Tuesday I did what I always do when I feel overwhelmed at work. I wrote a list. So I could see that it was actually more manageable than it seemed to be in my mind.

The list only had four things on it and writing it didn't help for a change - especially when I decided to check on the calendar and see just how many working weeks I had to do it in. Full panic mode!

So I made a plan of attack. To work every hour that I possibly can in the next few weeks. My plans are rarely complex. That's probably why I suck at chess.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it?!

Surprisingly, though it's been a little bit fun. I've been setting myself targets for the day and if I reach them I reward myself. With a piece of home-made toblerone rocky road. And if I don't reach them I console myself. With a piece of home-made toblerone rocky road.

And I've managed to palm off some of the meal-making. Luke and Becky did an amazing job of the burritos last night and I got to know what it feels like to just rock up at the table to have the meal waiting there. I could get used to that.

And I play games with myself. Because that's the only way you can appliqué 60 of the same leotards without going a little bit crazy.

The game I play is beat the clock. All you need is a stopwatch (or a phone with a stopwatch function), a full bobbin of thread and no interruptions.

This is not my fastest 1k time. This is my current record for appliquéing all the white bits on this current leotard. Thirty seconds faster than the first time I timed it. And I was as excited about this PB as I am about any PB. 

But timing is also a double-edged sword because it gives me something tangible to base my panic on. Multiply that number by 60. Add in the appliqué time for the purple pieces multiplied by 60. Then there's cutting time, pinning time and the occasional food/drink/toilet break and the final answer is ... cutting it too fine for my liking.

And somewhere in the middle of this work-fest I've got to squeeze in a quick trip down south to go for a little run. 

But the thing is - I always get them done. So my motto for the next few weeks is going to be Less Panic. More Work.