Saturday, February 27, 2010

You know you are an ultra runner when...

You know you are an ultra runner when...
  1. 6am is sleeping in.
  2. Your feet look better without toenails.
  3. You can expound on the virtues of eating salt.
  4. You know the location of every garage, public toilet, and water fountain within a 20 km radius of your house.
  5. People at work think you're in a whole lot better shape than you think you are.
  6. You actually are in a whole lot better shape than you think you are.
  7. You have at least 5 blisters on your feet at any one time.
  8. You always have at least one black toenail.
  9. You don't need to paint your toenails; they're already different colors.
  10. Have a running shoe collection that would make Imelda Marcos envious.
  11. Your number of toes to toenails doesn't match.
  12. You consider the mould in your bottles extra electrolytes.
  13. You're embarrassed that you've only done 90K's of running in a week...
  14. You run nearly 50km one day and then get up and run again the next day.
  15. The only time major household projects (or any housework for that matter) get done is in a taper or race recovery.
  16. It takes 18kms to "warm up".
  17. You're old 15km "long run" is now your recovery run.
  18. You are asleep at 8pm.
  19. Its not unusual to have had 2 - 3 gels, a couple of cans of coke and sometimes a chocolate bar before 8am...
  20. You're fast run pace is now 4.30km pace.
  21. Caffeine and compression tights are your new best friends.
  22. You chaff in all sorts of odd places and sometimes you have to wear the same running top all week (clean of course).
  23. You stop swimming because your legs are so heavy that they drag along the bottom of the pool (which is odd because you love swimming, but aren't really fond of running)...
These are all the things that define the training that I have been doing lately...Just 3 weeks to go now and my long race will be upon me... I will be heading into the unknown and it scares me a little. But I have put in some long hours training so fingers crossed.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Jason's new tattoo

Hi there, well since I last blogged Jason got part one of his birthday present... a new tattoo. About 4 - 5 months ago Jason drew a little doodle of what could be his new tattoo...little did he know that I had stolen this drawing with the goal to surprise him for his birthday.

I braved the motorcycle gang members and went to the tattoo parlour... I felt very out of place walking into the place with the gang member, but everyone was really nice. They took Jason's design and did some very small refinements... like adding all the extra little islands around the place and it was done... Jason was booked in.

Now its quite hard surprising someone with a tattoo, its not like you can secretly get it done or anything, so I had to tell him what was going on. Needless to say Jason was a little apprehensive... he had forgotten the design he did.

I must admit, I was a bit worried as well as I didn't know the quality of the tattooists that I had booked him in with but they had a great website, had good tattoos themselves and had been in business for over 30 years in Perth... it had to count for something right?

Anyway, Jason had over 3 hours of it yesterday on his ribs, which is apparently one of the worst places to be tattooed... the end result speaks for itself I think....its still a little red and inflamed, but that should go down over the next week o so...

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Quick update from Perth

Hi there,

Well since I last wrote it seems like we haven't done anything worth reporting on but when I look back we have had a hugely busy January. January for me has been a month of teaching my body to run ultra marathon style. This means 100+km of running each week. With last week being my maximum to date at 132km!

I am training for 59.8km running race and i tell you what, its amazing what our bodies let us do. Every day I wake up thinking that I won't be able to run another step, but then I add more to what I did the week before. A 20 km run seems short and normal now and anything less seems like a dawdle! I even did my first ever marathon last Sunday after a 90km training week. So it is all going well.

I have so much work on at the moment though so it is a constant battle between trying to egt through my work and do my training and still have a life! Hopefully works quietens down somewhat soon!

As a consequence of all this work I am already counting down the days till our NZ holiday and am looking forward to the break! Bring it on!

Jason on the other hand has had a slightly less hectic month and is forever supporting me through the busy days. He has decided not to do the Half Ironman again this year, partly to do with the fact that we have three weekends in NZ when training will not be easy for him to do.

Jason and I are support kayaking for the Rottnest Island Swim in a couple of weekends time which will be interesting to do. I haven't been in a boat for a while so 6 hours of it may play havoc on the hop flexors! and fingers crossed for a day less than 40 degrees!!!

That's about all from us... in the next week or two we have the Rottnest Sim, we will be going to Avatar, I have a surprise for Jason's birthday on the weekend of 7 March, which I can't tell you about as he will read this and we will be preparing for the trip to NZ. In this 6 weeks I need to average at least 130 - 140 km of running a week and I have two work trips to Melbourne!!!

Take care and I will post again soon.