Monthly Archives: May 2013

Back on the horse – Huntly

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(May not in fact contain horses).

I ran Huntly 10k today, because I could and the price was right. The achilles pain is easing off, meaning I’m edging back into training. Hooray! I decided to wear a silly outfit because I figured it would slow me down and remind me I’m not racing – thanks Helen and Sandra for the morphsuit and tutu components.

Yar! Image by The Edge - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151590331142159.1073741831.196135892158&type=1

Yar! Image by The Edge – 97.8 Waikato

It all went fine, really. There’s a bit of an ache in me ankle which I’m icing as I type, but it’s not major. I like the variety of the Huntly course, and the river views – it’s like crossing the Harbour Bridge but slightly littler. The costume was rather warm but seemed to make people smile. I was sensible starting and kept a pretty consistent pace. Luckily I knew the k markers were for the half or I might have been confused/excited to have done 2k in 7 minutes.

They put a couple of hills in the 10k this year. Sneaky! Athough that didn’t matter, because I wasn’t racing, right? If I have one irritation with today, it was my default runner’s instincts. Hey look, there’s Oscar, I thought around the 7k mark. It would be really cool to chat, maybe we could even cross the line together. And did I? Nope. Whizz, bye. A couple of ks on and I’m slowly slowly slowly getting closer to Tracey, who is awesome and we haven’t run together for aaages. I’ll catch up and we can cross the line, it’ll be great. So did I? Nope. 400m to go and brain says sprint. Thus finish line fun is sacrificed for 6 seconds, in a time that’s 3 minutes or so off a PB and was never meant to be fast. What a knob. Sorry guys! So that was my philosophical lesson of the day: chill the heck out and don’t let the brain’s central governor spoil the fun.

The coolest part about the day was possibly the baking. Dead heat between Jenni’s chocolate chickpea cookies and Sandra’s carrot cake muffins. Yum.

Also excellent: Hawks rocking the party all over the shop, a few awesome nutters running to the race from Auckland, top notch whanau support, and the fact that I had a tutu over the onesie. Good to be back.

 

What I really think about when running

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I was able to run for an HOUR today, which is quite significant. It was actually about 70 minutes, because I was in a happy daze and forgot to turn around. Anyway, it reminded me of this phenomenon:

what think I think about when I runThat’s overly glib though – in truth, I can do both simultaneously. Multitasking! (I don’t define food as trivial.)

smoothie and almond butter

What’s not to like?

 

Otherwise fine

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achilleshowyougoingMy mum was over this weekend and we attended a race at the Hawks. “Runners seem to just greet your achilles,” she observed afterwards. Ah, runners. We understand each other, and the awesomeness of running, and thus civilities take a logical unrepressed order:

– “How are you?” (ie, your injury).

– “Still haven’t got the achilles right so that’s frustrating, but otherwise I’m fine.” (Done.)

Whereas everyday life non-runner greetings go more like this:

– “How are you going?”

– “Great!” (Inside voice: “Apart from NOT RUNNING. Nice operational legs and tendons you have there, which you’re rampantly wasting by NOT RUNNING on them”).

I’m joking, sort of. Cue blog tumbleweeds, anyway. I haven’t written anything for a while because I haven’t run much for a while. The achilles/plantaris injuries have been taking a glacial pace to improvement, but I’ve been super patient and not disobeyed the physio at all aside from some generous estimates on what might constitute a 3k jog. It’s currently in a 2 steps forward, 1 step back stage but hopefully, hopefully, heading in the right direction. Still eating almond butter off a spoon as consolation.

I attended a Kugs advanced running workshop a few weeks ago and enjoyed that a lot, especially tying Jenni up with elastic. Lots of interesting exercises and info – I recommend it.

Weirdly I have been way more tired and generally blah in the 6 weeks since stopping the 100k per week regime. A recent doctor’s visit was inconclusive, which I interpret as meaning I’m allergic to not running. First club race back on Sat though – hooray. It’s not quite the loopy NZ 100k champs, which I really wanted to do this Sunday (good luck all!). Or T42 and Rotorua Marathon (good luck to you all as well.)

If you didn’t catch it on Facebook, this excellent video of the Kauri Run has just come online. It’s 20 minutes, but it’s very good – great editing and coverage of the whole field. Kerry sings. I potter along (rambled about it last year).. There are hills and coast and trails and it’s funny. It definitely gives a real taste of the charm and challenge of Kauri.