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 :)