Two weeks to go!

It appears that I started writing this most excellent of blog posts two weeks ago, but never finished it. It may not just be a good blog post and not excellent, but here goes.

There are only two weeks until Catherine and I return to England for a brief holiday. Before that though we have the small challenge of Newcastle marathon to attend to.

Training has gone well for both of us, Catherine would probably not agree, but I have seen her make big steps lately. No pun intended. She has recovered from terrible blisters and a niggling IT band to smash training in the last two weeks. I am really confident that she will beat 3:50 in Newcastle. She just needs to start believing in herself as much as I do.

 I have been getting back into training after a light week last week and thus far I have smashed it. Yesterday saw me run 5 x 1000m intervals down at Bondi beach, before a trip to the gym with my friend Prue for deadlifts, pullups, bench press and a some core work. This morning I feel good, which means I will be in bits tomorrow! Today I have shelved the gym cycle as I will cycle to my friend Bill's tonight to take him out for his speedwork session. Bill is training for Sydney half marathon, but more about that later. Thursday is my tempo run and yoga, Friday is a cycle, Saturday is the last long run of 8 miles and Sunday I am running with Bill for his 9 mile long run. I am looking forward to next week's tapering a lot!

Getting back to my friend Bill. Catherine helped guide Bill through his training for his first half marathon this year as he is one of our blind Achilles friends. At Orange running festival Bill successfully beat his target of  sub-3 hour time by finishing in 2.5 hours. Since then he has decided to continue training and try to improve on his speed for Sydney half marathon in May. This time I am guiding Bill and have added speedwork and tempo runs to his schedule of training.

Over the last two weeks since I began writing this post Bill has been conquering intervals in his speed work sessions with me on Wednesday nights. To give you some insight into the sort of person Bill is he was big on the weight lifting scene in his twenties, where he won numerous state and national competitions. These weren't competitions specifically for blind lifters either. Bill was beating guys that were bigger than him and had sight. He went on to tandem cycling after his lifting career and finished in the top ten in the World Champs in France despite not having a support crew. Now Bill has lost a ton of weight and is running mileage on knees without cartilage. Yes it's not great, but being active is his life and the enjoyment he gets far outweighs the pain he suffers through.

So my mate Bill is a bit of a legend. But when I introduced him to speedwork he was hesitant. (I can't repeat what he actually said ;)) He was unsure that he'd be able to run the speeds I was suggesting. But they weren't unrealistic, I'd used my knowledge to pick paces based on his race times and told him to stop whingeing. After the first interval of 400m we ran he was convinced he wouldn't finish them all. Not because of his knees but because he couldn't run any faster. He thought he had nothing more in his legs to give. I knew otherwise. I knew from my training that the first two intervals can be a bitch. Sometimes it feels like you are on the limit, or you feel sluggish, or you feel heavy, unable to push yourself forwards. But after those it gets easier, your body warms to the intervals and not just in a physical way. You relax. Your mind switches off. You get a clarity and focus that doesn't appear in many other parts of your life. Ok that last one was just me, but the rest is true!

So what happens? Of course Bill runs the first one and then proceeds to get faster all the way to the final 400m where he is running 15 seconds quicker than his first. Week by week I am convincing him that he is a runner, that he can run fast and that he just needs to believe. We have set a new half marathon target of 2:15 for the Sydney half. Check out my running blog to keep up to date on his progress. Runslothrun.blogspot.com

I'll update you on our marathon result on Monday.

Happy training : )

Tom

Tick tock

The clock is counting down to two very important events. The Newcastle marathon and our trip back to England two days after. Both Catherine and I are really looking forward to heading back to see family and friends. Neither of us can believe that it was a year ago that we were there for our friends' weddings.

My recent news comes in a few paragraphs. Firstly the coaching I have received from my friend Nancy "Rockstar" Lipman has proven amazing time and time again of late. After setting various goals for the year and focusing on what I really wanted to do I have seen the fruits of our labour. I have become more organised (I know this is hard to believe), from white board weekly planning to regular diary use and task lists I have cleared a path in my brain. Whereas before it felt like a muddle of thoughts and worries, it is now a much clearer place and as a knock on effect I feel happier than I have in a very long time. Don't get me wrong here. I am the luckiest man alive to have Catherine as my fiancee, to live in Sydney and to have food in my belly and very few real worries. But for people like me there is always something more, always a need to strive to be better, to help others and make something of our lives, so that we can leave a legacy. Heavy stuff eh?! I'll come back to that later.

As a result of my new found organisation (it turns out I had it all this time) I set short term goals. I did the small tasks, made baby steps and started pushing a snowball down the hill. This snowball has grown somewhat over the last couple of weeks! I have had about 7-9 days off recently and this gave me the time to network with different trades, meet people face to face and work on getting myself the work I want, namely carpentry. As of this week I have started with one new builder, I have a week of work with another builder next week and am awaiting a call back to start with a flooring company. As trade work goes nothing is permanent unless you work for a big company or have the right experience to slot into a smaller firm. I lack the experience, so I am getting it by working for a number of different builders. The added bonus of this is that I can hopefully keep a couple of weeks booked ahead and worry less about money. Not bad for a guy who thought he had no organisational skills!

 So work is coming together and I am positive that this year will be a year of great experience for me. But whilst I have been off lately something else has come to a peak. My running! Evidently not working is beneficial for your training as I have smashed through all of the last two weeks of training. I've been quicker than target pace on all of my recent run sessions and have even got in my cross training and two sessions of yoga this week. Happy days. This is just as well because tomorrow Catherine and I have our longest run to date, a lovely 20 miler. I am already trying to book a massage for next week to recover properly! Training has been one area this time where I have managed over 90% of my training runs and not skipped sessions unless work has prevented me. I think the organisation extravaganza has helped with training as I have set out sessions as appointments in my diary and value the time I spend training. I am hopeful that my target of 3:30-3:40 will be reached come April 6th.

Catherine has been super busy lately and has probably run herself (no pun intended) into the ground. As you may know she does love to train and still gives me the evils when I suggest that she take some time to rest and drop a session. However this time she has had to take rest as she received two massive blisters on her heels from Coastrek. She was having trouble walking on them they were so bad, so she took a week off running. Naturally she still visited the gym to cycle an hour a day and did at least four hot yoga sessions. The woman is a nightmare! As a result of not running her world almost imploded (such is the power of running!) and was a "tad" emotional for a couple of days. Knowing that she was overdoing it I told her that it would benefit her running to have time off and she would most likely come back faster and stronger. Lo and behold this week back at running has seen her run a half marathon, 10 x 400m fast intervals and an 8 mile tempo run quicker than target pace. Naturally I did say "I told you so" because it's not often that I'm right...

As I said we are both really excited about coming back to England. For those of you that read these crazy ramblings I hope they keep you a little updated on how we are getting on. When I get a chance I will upload a selection of photos to the blog, but not to make you jealous obviously!

Until next time, happy training!

Tom :)

Orange and Coastrek

The last two weekends have been busy with running and trekking.

The weekend before last we travelled with Achilles run club to Orange running festival. Orange is a lovely town near the Blue Mountains and a perfect setting for a variety of race distances. Catherine was guiding our friend Bill on his first half marathon and he didn't disappoint. Despite not having a cartilage left in his knees (a minor bump in the road) he ran his first 21km race in 2.5 hours. This was a fantastic result considering that Bill only started running regularly last year and his target was to finish under 3 hours.

I was running with our friend Prue who is a paralympic medallist in swimming. She has retired from that sport to focus on doing a variety of different things (namely having a normal life), one of which is running. This was her first 10km race and I was happy to help guide her with the help of our friend Claire. Despite Prue's protestations of having not trained enough she ran a very consistent and steady pace race to finish in 55 minutes. A great first effort!

After a week of our own marathon training we came together again, but this time for a 50km trek on Friday night. The Coastrek event was our nemesis to master, so with our name registered (Achilles Cake Walkers 35) we set off from Balmoral beach at 630pm to a fanfare. The trek took us along the coast (no shit!) following track that was both "rooty" and rocky, all the way to the Harbour Bridge. From there we had a relatively easy patch of road walking through the rich areas of Elizabeth Bay and Point Piper. We reached halfway after 5 hours of walking to receive a well deserved coffee and sarnie break. Once socks were changed and water bottles refilled we departed for the final leg of our 50km journey. Walking the hardest section of rough ground on the course we went from Rose Bay to Nielsen's Park and then onto Watson's Bay. From there it was the Pacific Coastal walk all the way back through Dover Heights, Bondi, Bronte and the finish at Coogee. After a few near emotional moments (mainly from me) we past the finish line after 11 hours and 16 minutes of walking. Finishing 11th in our "mixed" category and 45 minutes better than our target of 12 hours.

All in all this was a great experience (aside from Catherine getting horrendous blisters) and a joy to experience with friends from Achilles. I can safely say that I would rather run a marathon in 3-4 hours than stay on my feet for 11 hours walking though. It was mentally tougher than I thought it would be, I take my hat off to anybody that takes these challenges on.

I have updated my run training on my new blog RunSlothRun so that I don't take up all your time here. So check that out and let me know what you think.

Until next time, happy training!

Tom :)

Day one sans cafe

Day one, week one

This weekend just gone I made an absurd agreement with our friend Caitlin to stop drinking coffee. By this I mean I will not be purchasing any coffee beverages from shops. I will still be drinking the coffee I have at home from time to time.

The reason behind my abstinence from coffee shop coffee is two fold. Firstly the calories from the two coffees I purchase a day are not assisting my marathon training. At this point in my schedule I'm giving up a couple of things to help lose a little extra weight, in order to reach my goal of a sub 340 marathon. Subtracting 450 calories a day should certainly help in that regard.

Secondly the amount of money I spend at coffee shops each week is staggering. I worked out it is $100 a week on coffee alone. That doesn't include the odd almond croissant or breakfast bap (they are good though aren't they) that I sometimes consume out of hunger/complete lack of self restraint. Well no more! I am a new man. Organisation and self restraint are my new middle names (after Bertram Vance).

At the end of today I can happily tell you that no coffee shop coffee was consumed. For every day without coffee I am putting $8 (the approximate total of two large flat whites) into a pot. My plan is to use that money to treat Catherine (don't tell her!)

I will update you with my progress each day as the week progresses, so be sure to check back!

I've also got a post for you about the Coastrek event. For my marathon updates and info on running you can now read www.runslothrun.blogspot.com

Happy travels,

Tom ;)