Thursday, April 10, 2014

Another week over

Well for me anyway, a work week that is.  I have tomorrow off where I'll be doing a run in the morning, some housework, a bit of scrapbooking and then off to CWA in the afternoon.  Need to bake some Anzac cookies as that is our mini comp this month.  I may even talk Mike into going to the pub for tea.  Hmmmm.

A perfect day off ahead if you ask me.

I did spend the first few days of this week in recuperation mode.  Nothing drastic, just a sore spot under my right knee, mainly when going down stairs.  All great now.  Last Sunday I did my ...

LONGEST ... RUN ... EVER !!!  

I set my goal to achieve 18km last Sunday and by heck I did.  I've been told if I can run 18km then I'll be able to run a half marathon with the energy and excitement and adrenalin on the day.  I'm counting on that anyway.  I'll back track a bit, as it wasn't ideal circumstances in which I ran the 18km on Sunday morning.  Saturday night Mike and I headed down to Geelong to a birthday party of a dear friend of mine.  Dress ups, fun fun fun, the whole shebang, it was terrific.  I drove home the 2 hours (Mike married well, me being the designated driver!!) and we didn't get home till 12.30am.  Wind the clock back for the end of day light saving so okay lets call it 11.30pm when we got to bed.  Knackered!

So the alarm went off Sunday morning and I opened one eye and thought, urrrgh, late night, can't I just roll over and hit the snooze.  Nine minutes later it went again.  I remember my friend Munuela once saying that the pain and agony I would put myself through NOT doing a run and beating myself up about it, would be worse than the pain of the run itself.  So I dragged myself out of bed, splashed water on my face, woke myself up and got ready.

I knew I wanted to do 18km, this would be it, this would be the top run of my half marathon training and Mike had suggested running from Mortlake to Noorat would be about 18km.  So Sunday morning about 7.30am I set out.

It's a long road for sure, cows in the paddocks for company (actually the cows ran from the fence faster than I was running, that's for sure), I ran on the side of the bitumen against the traffic and the handful of cars and trucks that came the other way were very courteous,a few toots of encouragement, and of course I jumped all the way into the gravel or grass when they went by, urrgh prickles!

And look.  Look at this!!!  2 hours 30 minutes.  I wonder if this puts me in good stead to do the half marathon in under 3 hours.  It's only another 3 kilometres right?  That's my goal, under 3 hours.  Actually my goal is merely to finish, but under 3 hours would be great.  No, not just great, but FLIPPING FANTASTIC.


The aim of Sunday's run was to run to Noorat where I would ring Mike to come pick me up to take me home.  Around about 2 hours after I left, little did I know that Mike decided to drive up to see how far I'd come.  I hadn't seen him drive past and when I got to a certain angle of the road I looked ahead and see him leaning against the car parked on the side of the road.  Got to love it, as he saw me approaching he ran across to my side of the road and held out the drink bottle!  In true race style hey?  I stopped for a bit, bemoaned that my knees were hurting and that I didn't think I could run the rest, but he told me to pull up my big girl panties and just go for it.  He knew I wouldn't be satisfied if I got that far and didn't complete the rest.  As once I hit the mount up ahead it was downhill all the way.


So then he got in his car and slowly drove a bit further up the road yelling out encouragement and parked again and snapped a few photos.  Very blurry, but yes, that Mount in the background there is Mount Shadwell on the outskirts of Mortlake.  Yep, I had run THAT FAR!  Blows my mind.


So off he went again yelling out he'd meet me at Noorat.  I tell you, running downhill into town was the best feeling.  A sleepy tiny little town, no one in the main street except for Mike cheering as I got to him.  Yay, I had done it.  "Not quite" he yelled, I had to keep going another block up the road to hit the magical 18.  I begged to differ, but I did it anyway.  He said he couldn't live with my moaning if I had only done 17.99! ha.

GRAND TOTAL 18.24km and Runkeeper gave me a nice trophy there.  Thank you Runkeeper, I live for the recognition!


So wow, what can I say, I'm very VERY lucky to have Mike as my support crew in my corner.  He's so very proud of me and what I have been achieving and he too is looking forward to the half marathon coming up.  Oh and what a guy, he even remembered to bring the chocolate milk for when I finished my run.  Yes folks, I'm enjoying a choccy milk recovery at the end of a long run, a hint given to me by an ultra-marathoner that I work with.  Yum.

So I expected to feel sore after Sunday.  And yes Sunday afternoon and evening I was walking around like a little old lady.  But I have sprung back surprisingly well apart from a little twingy knee which has completely gone now.  I was surprised.

I am still yet to tell you about the fun party we went to on the Saturday night, I'll leave that till tomorrow's post.  Fun fun fun.

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