Semi-Ironman

Where to start?... at the end, of course.

2011-07-21T20:28:00.001+12:00

4am, 16 January 2011, Oak Ridge Hotel Room.

Shit, shit, shit. I need another piss!

Okay, nice and easy, now. We don't want a repeat of the 2am episode. You see at 2am I had been woken by a bladder fit to burst and I miraculously swung my legs off the side of the bed, walked almost effortlessly to the toilet and proceeded to pee. Very proud, but utterly amazed, at how sprightly my passage to the toilet had been. I proceeded to unleash the torrent of toxins that my kidneys had spent the last few hours processing in an effort to replenish my system after the grueling punishment it had received in the preceding 24 hours. As the flood became a trickle, I sighed a huge sigh of relief and relaxed. Then, in an instant I was on all fours, one hand in the bowl, the other beside the toilet and my face centimetres from the u-bend giving it a full-blown inspection. Hmmm, this can't be good, but I guess I have just finished my first iron-distance race in the worst conditions in ironman history, I thought to myself as I pondered how I had just managed to go from vertical to horizontal in no time flat. Taking a deep breath, I slowly got back to my feet, hugging the wall all the way back to bed. Note to self: next time try not to pass out.

So, as you can guess, I'm not too keen on this second trip to the toilet. In fact, I think I'll lie here for a few minutes in the hope that I'll just pop back off to sleep and the pressure in my bladder will some how dissipate. In fact, its at moments like these that I'd be thankful to have the old catheter bag back (I have some funny stories about those that I'll have to include here some day) - oh, what a convenience that would be.

Okay, I have to stop thinking about my bladder. Just concentrate on sleep... sleepy, you feel sleepy... Oh, sod it, I'll have to get it, the pressure is too great. Slowly does it, slowly does it.

Legs out! I said, "Legs out!" Bollocks, I think they need a little bit of a helping hand. Hands under right leg aaaand... Lift! aaaand left leg aaaand... Lift! Deep breath now... aaaand sit UP! Now that wasn't so bad and the head's feeling fine too. On to our feet and off we go. Nice and slowly. Now that wasn't so hard was it.

Now, time for some intense concentration, as I said, we don't want a repeat of the last episode, do we! Release slowly, just a dribble now. Great, all systems still fully operational. Phew, that's a relie... Oh shit, here we go again! Maybe if I just turn around really quickly and head straight back to the bed I'll be okay. No that's not working. THUD!

"It's okay, Geoff! I'm okay. I just passed out, but I am fine!" My temple had smashed against the porcelain hand basin with an almighty crack en route to the steely cold tiles of the bathroom floor, but somehow I lay their perfectly lucid and relatively unscathed.

"What the hell just happened?" Geoff said as he sped to my aid at lightening speed. I don't know how he didn't pass out himself, as he barely had time to wake up before he bolted to me in the bathroom and he had just finished the Lake Wanaka Half yesterday too. "Shit, mate! What the hell were you doing?" he queried. "I passed out having a piss. It happened at 2am as well." I said and proceeded to tell him about my two fainting episodes. "You stupid bastard!", he said, "why didn't you get me up to help you?" "I didn't want to disturb you and I thought I'd be okay this time." "Why didn't you sit down the second time then?!" Dah, why didn't I think of that? But I guess these things don't come to you that easily when you have spent more than 15 hours of the previous 24 hours moving non-stop under your own steam and then an hour and half in a medical tent unable to get far beyond horizontal.

My journey had begun with me strewn on the pavement having just been mown down by a truck and here I was, almost 10 years, in the same position - compromised, vulnerable and in a far from healthy state - and you know what? I couldn't wipe the smile off my face!

I had done it. I had come way further than full circle and done something no one would have believed possible. I had become an ironman!

Next time: 4am the day before and the start of one of the proudest days of my life.

My Tale of Challenge Wanaka 2011

2011-07-03T22:38:00.000+12:00

You may have wondered where my race report has disappeared to. To be honest I don't know why I have been reluctant to write it, but I think that it is coming soon. Strangely, even though I religiously record all of my event stats, I haven't even put my race details in my results spreadsheet.

Perhaps it is because deep down I feel like I did not give the race my all. A time of more than 15 hours was gut wrenching and not being able to run the marathon almost broke me on race day; not the cramp itself, just the fact that I couldn't run. I had trained so hard and yet I was not able to complete the race as I had scripted it in my head.

I know that's a load of bollocks and I should be proud of my achievement and, trust me I am, but that hasn't stopped me being more than a little disappointed. The fact that training has been far from ideal this year is also playing on my mind and has made me reluctant to write about my race experience for fear that it will discourage me even further.

But recently, I have had a few fleeting moments of reflection of all of the amazing and wonderful things that happened to me last year in training and the enormity of the target that I set myself and achieved on 15 January.

I have just re-read Dean Karnazes' brilliant first book Ultramarathon Man and his descriptions of his ultradistance running experiences brought all my experiences flooding back in technicolour. His third book, so eloquently entitled Run, and which I read in record time, also stirred many emotional memories of race day. But perhaps it was today's run up Dunedin's Pineapple Track and Flagstaff that has rekindled my enthusiasm to tell my tale.

Today's was a 90-minute easy, recovery run and last year this would have resulted in me selecting the flattest route possible, preferably out of the wind and somewhere that I didn't have to think about things too much. But today I decided the Pineapple Track was a must do. The track rises more than 520 metres to the summit of Flagstaff and opens to a panorama across the city to the ocean, breathtaking views inland to the Rock and Pillar Range and over to the Taieri Plains as they stretch out beneath. The track to the summit is 4km long and it took me 38 minutes to get to the top, but I felt exhilarated when I reached the top, not tired at all. It has been more than 20 years since I have been to the top of Flagstaff and never before have I considered running it, and hell would have frozen over before I'd have selected it as my long easy run.

Today, I realised that Challenge Wanaka has changed me. Easy has a new definition. No longer is easy the path of least resistance. Easy is now about how I approach a challenge (a state of mind and attitude towards the challenge), not the challenge itself.

I think I had expected a huge change to wash over me as I crossed the finish line in some baptism of enlightenment. When that didn't happen I just assumed that I had not achieved what I had set out to do and that is what I have continued to believe for the past six months. It's not that I didn't feel different following my race, I did. I felt some how more... I don't know... just more, actually. It was, and continues to be, a weird feeling. But today, I realise that the huge change that has happened is actually very small: so small I didn't even notice it's there, yet so huge that it has changed the course of my life forever. In a way it is the opposite of my accident, which was so instantly and tangibly life-changing (in both good and bad ways), when the reality was the changes I made as a result of my accident were so very small. The accident imposed change upon me, Challenge has empowered me to make a change.

The tale of something so life-changing ~~should~~ must not remain untold...

Watch this space...

More ups and downs

2011-06-20T21:15:00.000+12:00

After my last post things have generally been on the up, but training has not been without its interruptions. I ended up with a very swollen gland in my neck and had another visit to the doctor. There wasn't any apparent cause for the swelling, but the Doc thought it might have been something like 'sand' in my saliva gland (a small piece of grit produced by the body in the same way that the kidney can produce stones). It was very painful and put me out of action for 4 or 5 days.

Thankfully the swelling and pain disappeared within a few days and just a few days later I managed to run a PB for 5km in training and things were looking up again. Then, just 3 days later I rolled my ankle at a rugby practice for the Colts team that I am coaching, when I stood on a loose piece of turf during a game of touch rugby. You must be kidding! I was really beginning to wonder if someone or somthing was trying to tell me to give up altogether. That put me out for another couple of days and by the end of the week I was also needing to rest my ankle again.

That was Friday last week and I had the Balclutha Half Marathon on Sunday. Somewhat foolhardily, I figured that I'd still give it a go and not only that, I set myself an ambitious target to shave some significant time off my PB.

Given the last month's events, I have no idea why I was so sure that I would be able to get anywhere near a PB, but I was very confident. I set the following targets for my splits:
5km        23:00 (all down hill)
10km      46:30
15km      70:30
20km      95:00
21.1km 101-102 (the last km is a real slog up hill)

To my very pleasant surprise, here is what I managed to do:
5km          21:57 (PB by 64 seconds)
10km        45:20(PB by 2:34)

15km 70:01(PB by 3:15)

20km 95:16 (PB by 3:36)
21.1k 101:02 (PB by 3:45 – based oncorrected Cromwell time, only 1:34 better than actual Cromwell time,but it is definitely a shorter course)

I am stoked that I was able to achieve the pretty ambitioussplits that I had set myself. The first part was faster than I had hoped to bedoing as I got with a bunch that I could comfortably keep up with (and at timesI even pushed them along a little). At about 3km I contemplated slowing to mytarget pace, but I felt strong and was able to stay with the bunch rightthrough to 10-12km mark (when the group disintegrated anyway). Just as well I pushed a little harder for the first 10km as I was a little off target for thesecond and third 5km blocks. In the back of my mind I actually had1:40 as my dream time for the day, but I knew that the last hill would be amajor hurdle in achieving that. I gave it a bloody good nudge though. It wasn’tthe perfect race, but getting up there in terms of knowing what my physicallimits were and going right to those limits. I know that on the day I simplycould not have gone any faster at any point of the race and I have never feltthat before.

Average pace overall 4:47 min/km (11sec/km faster thanmy previous best pace).

In the meantime my weight is doing some weird things - up on Mondays and down on Thursdays, swinging as much as 2.5kg in 3 or 4 days. The upshot is that I have been hovering either side of 99kg for more than a month (as low as 98.2kg last Thursday and as high as 100.7kg the Monday before that). As is normal for me I am struggling a little with the nutrition plan. I am probably about 90% to plan, but it is the 10% that is letting me down. A 1:41 half marathon, though, has really spurred me on to lose more weight and acheive a 1:30 half marathon in the relatively near future.

Rediscovering my Mojo

2011-06-02T22:03:00.001+12:00

Since my last post, almost three weeks ago, I have done almost no training. First, I got a cold that knocked me for six and then I completely lost any drive to train.

I simply loathed the thought of going to the pool and doing what seemed like endless laps and I really struggled to get any motivation to drag the bike out of the garage. However, I have managed a few runs over the last few weeks and actually really enjoyed them. In fact, I am craving just heading out and just running for as long as my legs carry me.

I can't pinpoint exactly why my motivation has diappeared, but I think that it is a reflection of a number of things. In an email to Coach Geoff, I wrote:

1: I think I am physically run down
My physical condition is not that flash at the moment. Asidefrom the cold, I have had a number of sores on my face and in my nose and Igenerally feel lethargic. My cuboid problem persists and my hip is not 100% yeteither. I think this has been building for a while as I had been getting toThursday each week of training and pretty much not having any energy at all forThursday and Friday training. I am pretty sure this is a sign that I amphysically run down.

2: I am mentally drained

This comes not just from training, but from life in general.A number of things buidling up at work, training, rugby, etc is making life pretty hectic albeit not asstressful as it has been in the past.

3: There is uncertainty around my ultimate training goal forthis year
I am not sure whether I am going to be able to complete thetraining necessary for the full Challenge as there are some uncertainties around work and I don't know what demands it will place on my time. This is in the back of mymind all of the time when I train and makes it hard to commit to the session thatI am doing

4: Some of my training no longer excites me

For the first time in well over two years, I dread going outfor training. This is definitely true for swimming, sometimes the case for thebike, but only very rarely for the running.

5: I crave running

I still enjoy the running and actually feel myself cravingto do some very long runs. I wonder if having a month or so with a focuson running will reinvigorate me.

6: I still enjoy racing, but...

I received a comment on my blog the other day that hasreally kicked me in the guts and burst my bubble.

The comment was posted anonymously in response to my last post and went like this: "Oh pleeease!! Your times are very average, your trumpet blowing is getting annoying....spare us all!" I know I shouldn't have let it effect me, but it did. I deleted it as soon as I read it! I got angry! I felt depressed! But deep down I knew this hurt because it was true. I am nothing more than a very average athlete and right now there is nothing I could do about that.

In the past I would have used this sort of thing as motivation to spur me on, to train harder, to be faster. This time, though, I curled up in a (metaphorical) corner in self-pity.

On Tuesday, though, I rediscovered my mojo. I gave a lecture (the last of four on Challange Wanaka) to about 50 sports tourism students using excerpts from my blog to illustrate the emotional experiences of a Challenge athlete. As I read some passages, a lump came to my throat and my voice started to quiver. I got through, finishing about 10 minutes ahead of time, but exhausted and emotionally drained from the experience. As I did, a single clap came from the back of the room and then the entire class burst into brief, but heartfelt, applause. I nearly lost it right then and there, but managed to hold my composure. Then, in the lift back to my office, one of the young woman from the class said "That was a really inspirational lecture, thanks." In the two days since I have received two wonderful emails from two other members of the class thanking me for my lecture and for inspiring them to achieve. It felt fantastic!

Geoff has also worked out a new regime for me for the next couple of months that will focus primarily on running, with just a couple fo swims and one or two rides. It looks fantastic and has lots of nice short term goals in it to keep me interested. Running more should also assist in dropping my weight.

The outcome of this, however, is that it is unlikely that I will be doing the full Challenge Wanaka event in 2012. I will definitely be doing the Lake Wanaka Half and possibly one or two others over the summer, but, for the moment at least, I am in no state of mind to continue with the training necessary to pull off the full. I am both relieved and saddened at having reached this decision, but I want my next Challenge event to be the best I can possibly do and I know, even this far out, that I am unlikely to be able to give my full effort in 2012. My goal for Challenge is still the same - I want to make the top 20 in my age group - I am just being more realistic about when this might be (notice I said 'might', there is always a chance that I could upgrade my 2012 entry, should Geoff and I decide in a month or two that things are going well enough). Look out in 2013!

To be honest, I am really looking forward to doing the Lake Wanaka Half, as I am likely to be up against several people that I know: Lil Bro' Chris; James Brundell; another James; and even Coach Geoff. This makes me even more determined to be at a lean racing weight and to attain the target of under 20kg.

I've also started helping several mates with their training for various events. Two are old high school mates (Jas Wadsworth and Tony McAuliffe) who want to do the Moro Half Marathon in September, while my brother Chris and a friend from work Andrea Farminer have asked for advice on how to manage their training for the Lake Wanaka Half. It gives me a huge buzz to help these guys. I'm not promising any results, as my advice is pretty general stuff compared to the taylored specifics I get from Geoff. If nothing else it gives them a bit of structure and I am always their to motivate and encourage (or kick up the arse in the case of Tony).

It's been a really tough couple of weeks and I have had to dig really deep to get back on track, but I think that I am now heading off in the right direction, reinvigorated and recharged.

Gore Half Marathon - flailing arms and heavy breathing

2011-05-15T22:24:00.001+12:00

Another little success today. I ran my second fastest half marathon ever, on what is one of the toughest courses I have done. There is a 150 metre vertical climb, with most of the first 9km up hill and then another 1.5km climb at about 11.5km. And, you guessed it, my friend the wind was blowing a nasty head wind in our face for most of the up hill stretches.

I definitely used my Challenge experience to get me up the hills. I chanted "I'm strong in the wind"... "Stay strong" and I was strong on the up-hills. Strangely, though, I found it tough on the down hill stretches as my hammies just didn't want to let me stride out. I guess that comes from all of the riding that I have been doing over the last few months. Strong quads and calves for climbing, but short hamstrings holding me back.

The really good news is that my hips were absolutely fantastic for the first time in... well as long as I can remember. There was no pain and no restricted movement. My right hip has not been free at all since my accident and has been particularly bad for the last few months. Geoff and my osteo (Abby Carrington) have been doing a lot of work on it and Geoff has given me a series of exercises to activate all of the relevant muscles, neurons, etc. It's all working exceptionally well.

I didn't know what to expect today as it has been more than 6 months since I have run a half marathon (the previous being my PB at Cromwell in October), so I am stoked with the result. Little bro', Chris, has been doing some impressive times in training, but I was able to keep pace for the first 5 km and even held a 50-80 metre lead at the 10km mark. A bout of stitch, after a gel and cold water at 10km (sorry Geoff, I know you don't want me using gels), slowed me and put a dint in my confidence. Chris passed me at the bottom of the hill at the 11.5km mark and I let him go, but half way up he started to slow and I gained a few metres back to be less than 50 metres behind.

By the 15km drink station Chris had a 50km lead and just after that powered away to over 100m ahead of me. Shortly after I reeled in a young guy whom had been ahead of me and who was clearly in discomfort for most of the last 10km. As I passed, he asked if this was my first race and I politely let him know that this was my 18th half or full and then, unfortunately, it appeared I had gained a friend for the rest of the race. His form was all over the place as he shook his arms in discomfort every 5m or so and his breathing was irratic and I was sure that I would shake him. But, NO, he bombarded me with a barrage of questions about how far to go, how long it was going to take, what was that beep (as my GPS signalled another km)...

All of this was sapping my energy so I decided that I had to drop him and drop him quick, I put the pedal to the metal and, you guessed it, he stumbled along, arms flailing everywhere and heavy breath grunting in my ear, never more than a pace or two behind me. He was really stuffing up my concentration and in the meantime, Chris was inching away. Then, with Chris about 180-200m ahead, I spotted the 18km drink station and I knew this was my chance to drop my new friend. I wanted to help him, I really did, but he was ruining my chance of clawing back some time on Chris.

I grabbed a drink, took one small gulp (hoping my mate would do the same and slow) and upped the ante as we rounded the corner. My strategy worked. As we round the corner the head wind rose and his breathing intensified and I knew this was the time to make a move. "Strong in the wind", I repeated over and over in my head and I was able to stride away. At the same time, I could see that Chris was struggling ahead and that I was gaining on him ever so slowly. I was careful not to go too hard too soon, but I was confident I could rein him in.

At about 19.5km, I was 120m or so behind Chris and I lifted the pace and was really happy to feel the pace quicken substantially and I began to reel him in. I was taking big chunks out and as he rounded the last corner, with what I thought was about 500m to go, I was only 30-40m behind. I knew he was mine. I could tell he had nothing else left as we'd done training runs together where I'd practiced exactly this scenario. I round the corner and... 'bloody hell, that's far too close' ... the finish line was less than half the distance that I expected.

I now knew that, barring a trip or stumble from Chris, I'd really struggle to pip him at the post (something I'd played over in my head on a number of occasions). I still gave it a bloody good nudge though and finished 10 seconds behind.

In the end, I finished in 1:45:23 (on a course that was 300 metres short, DAMN IT) and Chris finished in 1:45:13, a whooping 6:22 faster than his previous PB. Well done, Chris! That's 2:2, as far as half marathons go between us, but I am still 30 minutes ahead on aggregate time. Bring on 26 June and the Clutha Half Marathon!

Double digits

2011-05-04T22:58:00.000+12:00

I'm stoked to have finally moved back into double figures... this time for good.

This morning I took a sneak peek on the scales (I normally weigh-in on Thursday and Monday) and I was pleasantly surprised to read 99.5kg. That's the lightest I have been since about 1998! I was around 99.7 last November but was over 100 by race day and crept back up to 106 by March.

The next target is % body fat lower than % muscle mass. I've been slowly watching the two lines converge on the graph that I plot from my scales (body fat getting lower and muscle mass getting higher) and there is now only a 2% difference between the two figures.

After that 90kg is my big target as I haven't been less than 91kg in at least 22 years. Then the next serious target is 83.5kg which is 'normal' BMI for my height. I haven't been a 'normal' weight since I was about 10!

I've been losing an average of just under 1kg per week so at this rate it is conceivable that by August I could be at a normal weight. Given how much stronger I feel already having lost 6.5kg in the last 6.5 weeks, I can't wait to be in the 80s.

I had an awesome run session yesterday after a 2 hour ride on the bike. I felt very strong and was able to easily turn it into a progressive effort, starting out at about 5:26 pace for the first km while I found my run legs again and working up to 4:43 pace for the last of 6kms. It felt great to have spring in my legs and energy to burn...

The battle of the bulge is underway and so far I am winning; slowly, but I am winning.

Dangerous

2011-04-26T21:49:00.000+12:00

Today I went out on an easy 2 hour ride, followed by an easy 15 minute run. It was a very cool, yet beautiful, calm afternoon and I was enjoying the opportunity to just turn the legs over and enjoy the scenery.

I wasn't slacking by any stretch of the imagination - I was averaging about 29km/h and keeping a nice steady cadence - but I was aware that the weekend had been quite a big effort (Lake Hayes Tri and a couple of 10km runs) and I needed to give my legs an opportunity to recover. That was until I got back to Portobello on the way back to town.

As I headed past the pub, I spotted a cyclist coming down off the hill from the high road over the Otago Peninsula. I swear she fluttered her eyelashes under her dark glasses and a broad smile spread across her face. As a red-blooded male, I nodded in acknowledgement, smiled back, pumped out the chest and picked up the pace a little as I sped on by.

I thought to myself, 'I bet she is going to try and tack on behind me to get a lift back to town', so I took my drink bottle out of its cage and slowed (just a little) to see if she would catch up. Sure enough within 500 metres or so she was right on my tail.

I picked up the pace to about 37 km/h just to show that I was no slouch. She easily kept pace and a couple of kilometres down the road, blonde pony tail flowing behind her, she went past me as if I was standing still.

GAME ON!

Having initially been attracted to cycling together by the usual "guy-thing" (a young, attractive, athletic blonde - apologies to my female readers, I am not a chauvinist, just too honest for my own good), I was now also in a duel to protect my ego. No way could I just drop off and let her ride off into the distance. I'd started this push and I had to finish it.

For the next ten kilometres into the wind we sped along at 37-41 km/h and, if the pace dropped anywhere near 35km/h, the person at the rear sprinted to the front and lifted the pace again. It was a great effort by both of us, but I knew I was going too hard for the easy session that I was supposed to be having.

Thank goodness she stopped when she did, because I would have had no legs left to do my run if we'd carried on the rest of the 5 kilometres to the end of the Peninsula. She sat up and said "This is me. Thanks, mate." I replied with my own "Thanks, mate" and carried on until I was out of sight around the next corner and then dropped the pace back to 25km/h.

It took me a full 10 minutes to get my run legs when I got off the bike and the whole run was a real struggle, so I knew that I had definitely pushed too hard.

I know... I'm a sad bastard, but every guy I know would have done exactly the same thing. It's just that I am the only one stupid enough to write about it and publish it for the world to read.

I think there is a lesson in this for all of us sad middle-aged men. Never let an attractive woman, half your age, lead you astray!

Two steps forward, one step back

2011-04-15T21:45:00.001+12:00

Bummer, I have an injury!

It was a big weekend on the bike with three two-hour sessions totalling 175km. It was great, but my lower back and hip were bloody sore once I cooled down after the second ride and I knew somethign was up. I had hurt my hip at school camp, tackling a 9 year old a month earlier (I know, what the hell was I doing tackling a 9 year old?) and managed to do much the same thing last Wednesday at U9s rugby practice (I'm a slow learner).

On Monday, I got out of bed feeling like a dottery 90 year old and took an age to get moving, then getting off the toilet my back went a very painful spasm (as it had every few days for the last month). That wasn't the worst of it though, my shoe laces were the final straw and I could not strighten up again. It was agony and I knew that it wasn't good.

Long story short, I ended up at an osteopath (Abby at BodyWise Osteopathy) who did wonders, but I have struggled with sitting, standing and swimming all week. Strangely running is okay and has even been encouraged by Abby, but I have really had to take it easy in the pool and on the bike and had to flag the bike altogether today as I am extremely sore after Abby worked on me yesterday.

I'm still hoping to be okay for the Lake Hayes Triathlon next Friday, but will not push it and if I am not 100%, I'll give it a miss. It's a bit frustrating as I had felt that I have been really getting back into the groove.

My weight loss is also a bit up and down. I lose anywhere up to 2kgs Monday to Thursday each week and then lose my self control on the weekend and put 800g to 1kg back on by Monday. The upshot is that, as of yesterday, I have lost 5kgs in four and half weeks. That's pretty good really, but if I had been able to maintain the control over the weekend, I could have lost 8-10kgs. I am 101kgs now and hoping for under 100kg for next Friday, which will be the lightest I've been for a race in several months and at this rate I will be 90kg before I know it.

Stop looking, I've found them...

2011-04-03T21:09:00.000+12:00

You can all stop looking now, I've finally found my training legs (and arms for that matter).

A great week of training this week (first time over 10 hours since race day) and today I finally felt like I was making some headway again. It began with an excellent swim session on Friday when I belted out a set of 13 100s 5-10 seconds faster than I had been managing for the previous 3 weeks and faster than I have ever done.

Yesterday wasn't so flash as my right hip was so sore that I ended up spending the end of the day laying on the sofa, but today I went a little off-piste (away from my training schedule) and did a reasonably long and hard brick session (1:45 bike and 30 minute run).

It felt great just going for it as I felt. I was training with Chris and James and at various points along the way, I decided to put the foot down to try and see how much of a jump I could get on them. I felt extra strong and confident and free. It was awesome.

I'm not planning to be so reckless all the time, but it was good to blow the cobwebs out just this once.

The next race is coming up in under 3 weeks so I'll be keen to see how well I can progress over that time, as even though last weekend went well, I actually didn't feel that it was up to the potential that I have built up through last year's training. Bring on the Lake Hayes Tri on Good Friday!

Sixth at Otago Champs

2011-03-27T23:03:00.000+13:00

I just competed in my first Otago Triathlon Champs. I wasn't expecting much, as longer training runs have really been taking it out of me this week and to be honest I felt like crap all week. Lots of little niggles and legs of lead! It got so bad by the time yesterday came around that I didn't train at all yesterday because my back and right hip were so sore (plus there was a swim carnival on at the pool by time made it there two hours after I should have started).

In fact I was expecting to be painfully slow in today's race and I fully expected Little Bro' Chris to motor on by somewhere on the run. But, to my surprise I felt great and I did quite well given the lack of an focussed preparation and the extra weight that I am carrying at the moment.

While my swim is still a bit slow, it was way better than the open water race that I did on Tuesday evening. Chris and I actually went stroke for stroke, so I think he has been getting some extra sessions in without telling me. It won't be long and he'll be beating me out of the water. He also beat me out of transition and to be honest at this point I thought: 'Hell, this is worse than I thought. He'll be right with me through the bike leg and he'll overtake me in the run'. But by the time we got a kilometre or so out on the bike, I had gathered up a pretty good head of steam and I passed him pretty easily. I expected him to pick up his effort and try and stay with me, but by the time I glanced behind me another kilometre down the road, I had a few hundred metres on him.

James Brundell (one of my training buddies) was in transition when Chris and I arrived and left about 20 or 30 seconds ahead of us. He was wearing a yellow dayglow bike top so he was easy to spot about 600-700 metres off in the distance, so I set him as my next target. I was pretty sure that Lindsey Dey (Dunedin Tri Club President) was also somewhere near him and I knew both of them were in the vet males section of the race, so I was doubly determined to catch James.

James just beat me into the bike-run transition and that is where I overtook him. Chris was nowhere in sight so I was feeling quite relaxed that I'd put enought distance on him to hold out till the end of the race, but I could see Lindsey a few hundred metres ahead.

I'd passed quite a number of people on the bike and managed to average a touch over 33.5km/h, so I was pretty stoked, but having gone quite hard, the heart was just about leaping out of my chest as I dismounted and I was convinced that my legs would give out on the run. So I figured that I needed to go hard from the start both to try and catch Lindsey (realistically I knew there was no chance of that happening, but what the hey) and to get as much distance on James and Chris as possible to try and maintain my lead over them. It turns out that my legs didn't give out and I was able to maintain a pretty steady pace in the mid-4:50s for the entire 5km (I know its slow, but you try running faster carrying 103kg).

In the end I didn't catch Lindsey (he was probably a minute ahead in the end), but I did manage 1:22:44 overall (my fastest time over the 750m/20km/5km distance) and I beat James by around a minute and Chris by around 2:30. I was sixth vet male! OK, there were only eight vet males, but it is my first go and I didn't exactly train specifically for this race and there were plenty behind me in all age groups. Next year I want to give this a real good nudge and get closer to the top three. It will mean taking about five or so minutes off today's time, but with the planned weight loss, that should be a breeze.

If I'm being honest, Chris is doing pretty bloody well for a complete novice who also carries a few too many kilos around. His swim today really surprised me - he was literally right beside me until about 150 metres from the end, when he veered off course by five or six metres and bumped into a swimming platform anchored in Macandrew Bay (ouch, that's gotta hurt). Actually I was deliberately swimming right on his hip at the point where he veered off in the hope that it might put him off his stroke a little. The plan obviously worked better than I had hoped, but he was still only seconds behind when we both stumbled out of the water. He has also been doing some great 5km times in training so I wasn't surprised that he was a good 50 seconds faster than me on the run. If he can get some more quality time on the bike, I will struggle to keep up with him (Note to self: must stop lending and gear to Chris and giving him training tips). For now though, I am taking the opportunity to give him a hard time about beating him - him being five years my junior and all. :-)

That's one of the things I love about triathlon, you can have all these little races within races: me vs my bro'; me vs James; the vet mens section; the race overall (I always like to see how I stack up against everyone else including the teams); beating someone on the bike leg, even though they may have been faster in the swim and you know they will pass you again on the run. Then there are your own personal achievements: even if you have a bad swim, you can have a great bike or run; you can improve your time for that particular course; you can improve your position relative to the rest of the field (i.e. what percentile you finish in). So, even though I am still down the back of the pack, I still feel like I am acheiving something every single race and I'm lovin' it!

Back online

2011-03-21T23:02:00.000+13:00

Just finished my first full week of training for about four weeks and started on a nutritional regime that should see me in better shape for Challenge 2012. So I am back online training and blogging.

I blatted out almost 7.5 hours of training last week and eat so much I felt like I had something in my mouth all day and half the night. Something worked though, because I lost almost 2kgs.

I'm also in the process of buying a timetrial bike so that I can go faster. Well, so I can kid myself that I am going faster. It's a bit like red cars going faster than other colours, really. The reality is it's the engine that counts and I am in the process of up grading that to a lighter more powerful version too!

I know that I promised a race report and that is on it's way soon too. So watch this space.

In the press again

2011-01-31T16:41:00.000+13:00

On Sunday 30 Jan little bro', Chris and I featured on Contact Tri TV (http://tvnz.co.nz/contact-tri-tv/video) and then an article about us appeared in the latest TriNZ newsletter (http://www.triathlon.org.nz/news?id=95).

A new beginning

2011-01-30T14:32:00.000+13:00

Well, I have my first month of training from Coach Geoff as I set out on a new adventure for the year. It's recovery mode for a few weeks yet, but now that I have completed my first iron-distance race, I am starting to believe in my ability to become more of an athlete.

I have a whole new perspective on training, on my limits (and how my perceptions of what they are have always held me back) and what I might be capable of. In most areas of my life I have always believed that anything is possible if you work hard enough, but never really felt that to be true of my athletic prowess. NOW, I BELIEVE!

This year I have some ambitious goals and I am going to pick them off as the year unfolds:

1) First and foremost I am going to get my weight down to something that is going to allow me to be faster and stronger. That means loosing another 20-25kg so that I am under 80kg - a weight I haven't been since I was about 16 years old. I can't imagine what that will be like, but I know that at very least I will be much faster than I am now.

2) A sub 1:30 half marathon before the end of the year. Given the planned level of weight loss, that should be a breeze (1kg is usually equated to 2-3 sec per km and my PB stands at just under 1:45), but I know that I am still going to have to work hard to achieve this.

3) A 3:40 marathon. This is a conservative target (if I attempt this at my goal weight) but, as I will also be training for Challenge 2012, my guess is it will be hard to fit in too much marathon-specific training. This will be more than 50 minutes off my PB.

4) Top 20 in my age group for Challenge 2012. This will require a more than 3 hour improvement on 2011 and somehow trying to overcome the cramping issues that I faced this year. In fact the cramping should deal with most of the time I need to make up and the weight loss a significant amount more.

None of this is going to be easy, but the rewards will be huge. I love what I have learnt over the last 12 months and I want to use it to become leaner, stronger, faster and more ambitious. I no longer accept that I am a back of the pack athlete for life. This year is all about working hard to move my way through the pack and I have longer term ambitions to make it close to the head of the field. The 'Good-on-ya-big-guy' that people have been encouraging over the last couple of years is going to become someone to be taken a bit more seriously.

Race reports are on the way, but I don't have consistent internet access at the moment and I have been busy with work and catching up on lost family time.

I Knocked the Bastard Off

2011-01-18T16:04:00.000+13:00

Just a very quick post to say that I am no longer semi-ironman, I am an ironman (even if it is not an ironman branded race).

Race conditions have been described as the worst for an iron distance race ever and the winds were worse than Kona. It was simply brutal.

For me it became simply a battle to survive, even though I had done extremely well on the ride (142nd overall of almost 400 starters). At the 8 hour mark I started to cramp in my inner thighs and after the first kilometre of the run it was with me constantly. I was forced to simply walk/jog to manage the cramp which came on everytime I went up or down hill, which on an undulating course made for very slow going. My marathon was 2 hours longer than it should have been and I am pretty gutted about that as, besides the cramp, my legs were feeliung great when I dismounted the bike.

A full run down of race lead up, race day and post race will follow over the coming weeks, but for now all you need to know is I finished in 15:07:13 and, because I was forced to walk the marathon, I have a bit of unfinished business.

This is not the end, it is just the beginning.

3 Simple, Yet Powerful, Words

2011-01-11T17:32:00.000+13:00

I am ready!

Reflection not so easy

2011-01-06T20:41:00.000+13:00

I thought reflection was going to be a relatively easy and somewhat liberating exercise, but to be honest rather than looking back I am entirely focussed on what lies ahead. I guess that’s a good sign as it means that I am focussed on race day.

I find it a bit strange that I am struggling to put into words what I have been thinking about for most of the last six months. To an extent, much of it is already out there for all to read, but there is still so much more that has been running through my mind on every ride, every run and every swim.

On the longer sessions a lot of this reflection has lead to momentary emotional boil-overs and there have been many times on long rides and long runs that it has rushed to the surface and tears have streamed down my face. Remembering my first steps as I walked for the first time after my accident; discharging myself from the hospital to get straight on a plane so that I could be with Carleen at her sister’s wedding; being there when James was born; finding out that Carleen was pregnant for the second time and then holding Emma for the first time... – all memories that have come flooding back.

Not all of the emotional up-welling has come from reflection. I have also visualised what it is going to be like as I cross the finish line next Saturday. Raw emotion pulses through me as I see myself entering the finishing chute with Carleen, James and Emma walking over the finish. Mark Watson, from Radio Sport and race commentator, echoing some of his humbling comments about me over the PA. Mum and Dad emotional like they were when I finished my first marathon. Gary & Chris (my brothers) and their families emotional too, as they were also along for the rough ride surrounding my accident. Last, but most definitely not least, Coach Geoff will be standing there as proud as punch – as he should be, he’s done a great job.

I have also thought a lot about Jacqueline Wyatt and her Mum, Paulette, and what they are going through. To be honest, I am torn between wanting to inspire Jacqueline to be more than she ever imagined before despite her circumstances and being fearful that I might be creating too much of an expectation for her that everything will be as it was before. I know she can be more than she was before, but I have no way of knowing if she will ever fully recover. I hope that I am sending the right message and that I can inspire her to be strong whatever lies ahead. For me, any money that I raise for her along the way is simply a bonus.

Right now, though, I just want to get on with it. I am growing increasingly impatient and race day cannot come soon enough. Once again, I'm guessing that is a good sign.

A time to reflect

2011-01-04T12:30:00.000+13:00

Over the next ten days I will take time to reflect on just where I have come from over the past nine and half years.

My last post was a little negative, but to be honest that is how I felt that day. I think it may in fact have been because a part me felt that this journey was just about over. However, since then I have actually come to the realisation that January 15 2011 will be just the beginning.

I feel just like I did once I was through the worst of my accident - I have been given a second chance at life, so I am going to make the most of it. It took my a while to figure out just what that meant, but I think that I have finally got it and Challenge Wanaka is just the start of it.

Over the next ten days I am going to reflect on where this journey has taken me, touching on the what I have learnt since my accident, but especially the stuff that I have learnt since I began my more active life two and half years ago. The posts may not come every day as internet access is not that easy in Hawea, but I will be recording my reflections in posts as they come to me and posting them when I get to the internet cafe.

Last big weekend

2011-01-01T20:06:00.001+13:00

This is the last weekend of long efforts. Today was supposed to be a five and half hour brick (bike to run session) and the day was perfect for it. Low 20 temperatures and light winds but, in short, it was one of my worst training sessions. I had to stop on 4 times on the 4 hour ride and had to get Carleen to come and pick me up as the 4 hours ended when I was in the middle of nowhere. I had under estimated the distance and time that it would take me.

My butt has taken a pasting for the last few weeks and I was saddle sore before I even left which was why I had to stop so often. I had also had two nights of absolutely rubbish sleep as the neighbours partied til the wee hours each of the last two nights.

Once Carleen had me back at the house, a full 25 minutes after I had stopped on the bike, I set off on what was supposed to be a 90 minute run, but I soon got a stitch and stomach cramp and had to walk. I couldn't shake it at all so was pretty slow and decided to pull the pin after 45 minutes.

So, all in all, a crappy start to the weekend. Tomorrow it is into the lake at 6am for a 90 minute session and then straight down to Cromwell for the Lake Dunstan tri. Monday sees the start of my taper and I think my body is well and truly ready for it.

Oh well, not much more that I can do to be prepared for race day. So, if I haven't put in enough work, then it's too late. Now it's just a matter of managing the next two weeks effectively and putting the finer planning details in place (race bags, transitions, etc).

The power of words

2010-12-29T20:05:00.000+13:00

As endurance athletes (yes, I am finally comfortable calling myself an athlete) we are constantly measuring ourselves by numbers: how many hours we have trained this week; what kilometre pace we have done; what average speed we achieved; what our splits are; how fast our transition was; how much we weigh; etc; etc. However, our performance relies on the power of words.

A lot has been written on the power of words and I am fully aware of the value associated with being a good wordsmith – after all I earn a living from words. But, it has only really been the last couple of months that I have realised the true power of words.

Words impact on an athlete’s performance in so many ways. At the Challenge Wanaka training camp in October, for example, Sam Warriner reiterated several times the mantras that she uses to power her through a race: ‘Long and Strong’ for her swim; ‘In the Box’ (and others) on her ride, and; ‘Quick Feet’ on her run. She repeats these simple expressions over and over to sharpen her focus. Geoff has also given me words to focus on while training and in the race and several of the websites that I have used (especially those relating to swimming – like Swim Smooth) have discussed the value of simple expressions that help improve and maintain good technique.

Recently I have also read that researchers in the UK found that athletes who used the swear words of their choice during training performed better than those who were forbidden from using any bad language. I tried this on my long ride the other day and I have to say, even if I didn’t perform any better, it made me feel better to swear at the top of my lungs as I battled my way into the gale force winds. I yelled the word five or six times and then just got on with it.

Conversely, words can be extremely distracting. I frequently have conversations with myself in my head when I am training, especially on long easy sessions. My mind will flip from one topic to the next in an instant. This became very clear to me on a run through Hagley Park when I was at a conference in Christchurch in November. Often the different strands of the conversation would overlap or one part would abruptly interrupt another. A typical 30 second section of the run went something like this:

Quick feet, quick feet. Shit it’s hot. Man I feel like crap today. Quick feet. Quick fe. She looks hot. I’m quicker than him. This surface is difficult to run on. Quick fee. Ahh, that shade is good. I wonder what the earth quake really felt like. Get out of the road you bloody idiot. I really have to concentrate better. There is a great blog post in all of this. Quick feet. Quick feet. I could start it like. I am gonna call it the power of words. Quick f. Shit my foot hurts.

This went on for the entire 30 minutes of the run and it was one of my worst of the year. The conversation just would not stop and I could not focus. I guess that is one of the things that sets top athletes apart from the rest. They can concentrate on a very narrow set of objectives and use simple mantras to become totally and utterly focussed on the task at hand. My problem is that I can only do this for very short periods of time (a few minutes, maximum) before my mind starts to wander. On my better training sessions and races, I am able to bring my mind back to focus relatively quickly by using those few key words, but I can never maintain it for an entire session or race.

I have also begun to reflect on when words become truly powerful. For me, words without action are vacuous and hollow. They lack meaning and passion. Perhaps that is why Challenge Wanaka is so meaningful for me. It allows me to put my words into action. Words that are simple, potent and powerful. This contrasts with the words that I use in my academic life, which are often complicated, convoluted and impotent. When I use words in training and racing their effect is immediately evident and gratifying, but when I lecture or publish even though I hope that my words have an impact, I may never see the impact that they have.

When and how words are delivered also has a huge impact on their potency. Even though Coach Geoff can tend to give me too much information at times (sorry Geoff, sometimes it’s overload for a rank amateur like me), the timing and use of words is brilliant at motivating me. Everything from a simple photocopied certificate posted to my home address that read ‘Congratulations on completing the first 20 weeks of training’. To a text that I received last night from Geoff, after I had informed him of the details of my latest training session, that read:

Jeez ur getting really fit. U are humming along nicely which is exactly what I worked out for ur training schedule. Get excited for the 15th because Richard Mitchell is fit and fast and ready to race.

Those words make all the pain and effort worth it and I will remember them on race day. When the going gets tough they will mean so much to me.

Mother Nature

2010-12-28T14:39:00.000+13:00

It’s amazing how Mother Nature can change our perceptions of a place.

I’ve been in Hawea (near Wanaka) since the Monday before Christmas. I have set up an office in the lounge of my in-law’s holiday house so that I can work and I have been utilising the Wanaka community pool for swim training, hitting the Challenge course for riding and circulating around a 7km block in Hawea for my runs.

It’s been a big week with four rides totalling 376km, the biggest being 191.7km in just over 7 hours over the Challenge course (plus a little bit more). I did more than 21 hours of training between Tuesday and Sunday last week (including one rest day). Even in normal conditions this would have been a tough week, but there have been persistent strong northerly winds for most of the week (certainly every ride), making it the most unpleasant of training weeks yet.

I have felt pretty strong, albeit fatigued, all week but the wind is totally demoralising. Tail winds are fantastic! Yesterday, on the long ride, I was easily (and I do mean easily) maintaining 40-50km/hour downwind between Luggate and Cromwell. BUT, when I crossed the bridge over Lake Dunstan and turned into the wind, it was like someone had attached a huge parachute to my seat post and my speed more than halved.

I guess it is partly because it is so easy down wind, but is also definitely just the sheer veracity of the wind. My aero position simply becomes like massive scoop sucking in air that pushes against my body acting as an air brake. My cadence steadily slows and I have to chop down gear after gear and within five minutes I am pedalling furiously in a very low gear, going nowhere fast.

However, whether riding or running, it’s not just the physical impact on my effort. It saps my mental energy. The constant, deafening roar bombarding my eardrums makes it nigh on impossible to concentrate. The howling in the power lines emanates a sense of foreboding like a scene from a disaster movie. The browned-off grass in the dry summer landscape forms constant waves on the roadside that look like the powerful current of a fast flowing river and I feel like I have to battle against it. The normally placid lakes become angry with white-caps that smash the unsuspecting shores. This beautiful landscape somehow becomes hostile and inhospitable.

Despite all of this, I know that I run strong in the wind (my half marathon PB in October was run in one of these nasty winds) and my legs remained relatively fresh throughout my 190+ km ride the other day. I am feeling confident that, if/when the wind arrives I am ready to defeat it. I have trained in every type of weather this year: torrential rain, 32 degree heat, snow, frost and, more often than not, strong winds. I am ready for whatever Mother Nature chooses to throw at us on race day.

A wierd place

2010-12-24T09:51:00.002+13:00

Over the last few weeks, training has become a bit strange. It’s not that I am unmotivated; I have no problem getting out there and doing the work that Coach Geoff has set down in my program. But, sometimes, when I get out there I seem to be in a strange state of mind.

It’s really hard to describe. Sometimes, I feel a little lonely – as if I am going through this journey all alone, yet I know that many people have been along for the ride. Sometimes, I wonder what the hell I am doing – how dare I think that I am capable of this feat, yet I know I have put in the hard yards. Other times, I just want to get on with it – surely these last few weeks of training can’t really make that much difference?

While I know I am not just going through the motions when I train, sometimes I feel like I am, because I am so conditioned to do what is set out for me that I just get out there and do it. As a result I kind of feel that I am not putting in enough of an effort, even though the times I am doing and the way that my body feels I know that I am.

Does that make sense?

It’s kind of a wierd place to be and I wonder if I am the only one that goes through this in the lead up to an ironman or if this is what I am supposed to be feeling? I certainly haven’t experienced this before any other race that I have done.

Awesome day's training

2010-12-19T20:50:00.000+13:00

I had a great race effort training session today. I did 3x 10 minute race effort swims in the harbour and got straight on the bike. For some reason my legs felt great after having been flat all week and I headed out at around 34-35km/h for a 90km ride. In the end I managed 33.1km/h and completed the 90km 10 minutes faster than the South Island Half Ironman (2:44:45 for 90.8km) and got off felling pretty fresh.

Then it was off on a 60 minute run at Ironman effort. My legs were feeling pretty fresh and I was able to easily maintain a steady 5:12-5:18 minutes per km (about 3:40 marathon pace). I know that I won't be able to mainatin that on race day, but it was a strong, relaxed effort. If I had done this at Ashburton, I would have been well under 5:40 for the race.

Yes, of course, this was all faster than race day pace, but I felt that the effort was about right to simulate race day. I hope I got it right!

Once again, Coach Geoff's training schedule seems to be coming through for me and I am starting to hit my straps (hopefully) just at the right time.

Jacqueline in the news

2010-12-15T22:09:00.000+13:00

Just in case you aren't sure who Jacqueline Wyatt is and how brace she is, have a look at this article from Campbell Live:

http://www.3news.co.nz/More-Christmas-magic-for-another-family/tabid/367/articleID/191038/Default.aspx

Radio Sport Interview December Update

2010-12-15T15:23:00.000+13:00

Powered by Podbean.com

Thanks to Gracie Prodcutions for permission to post this interview that aired on Sport Lately (Radio Sport) 14 December 2010.

Time to show we care

2010-12-13T22:31:00.000+13:00

As I have already noted in this blog (see Giving Back), on 18 November 2010, 12 year old Blenheim girl, Jaqueline Wyatt, had her pelvis crushed by a large truck while she was riding her bike to school. She was fighting for her life for several days and now she is on the long, slow, painful road to recovery.

I have a huge amount of empathy for Jacqueline and her family so I have set up a page for you to sponsor me on race day. All of the money will go directly to the Jacqueline Wyatt Recovery Appeal Trust (which is headed by Jacqueline's School principal).

You can choose to donate an amount regardless of my result or I have a couple of options where you can incentivise me to go as far as possible in the race (a per kilometre sponsorship) or finish fast (sponsorship per minute faster than my (secret) target of 14 hours).

If you want to help, please go to the page that I have set up and complete the short sponsorship form or email me directly and I will tell you how you can desposit money into the Trust's account: richard.mitchell@xtra.co.nz.

In the press

2010-12-09T20:54:00.001+13:00

I was recently interviewed by the D-Scene newspaper and they have syndicated it to their other papers. Despite some inaccuracies (i.e. the name of the race and the fact that I haven't yet spoken directly with the family), this hopefully the start of my efforts to give something back.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/4439748/Recovery-tale-offers-hope#share

Sure beats Disneyland

2010-12-09T00:48:00.000+13:00

My recent blogs may have painted a-less-than-rosey picture of my training over the last few weeks, but my time in Central Otago training on the Challenge Wanaka course was nothing short of mind-blowing. I have visited Wanaka several times a year for most of the past 25 years, but never have I experienced it like I did the weekend before last.

For some reason, while training all of my senses were heightened and every experience, especially the visual, filled me with awe. Perhaps it is because my view of the world was sepia-toned, filtered, as it is, through sunglasses and goggles: intensifying some colours and dulling others, magnifying contrasts and creating a painted world that would not look out of place hanging on the walls of some of the best art galleries in the world. Perhaps I am just 'in the zone'. Who knows and who cares? I just love that it has opened my eyes to a magnifcent place that I had begun to take for granted.

Here are some of the highlights (in no particular order):

I lie floating, weightless, in the early morning glow; soaring above diminutive sand dunes that sweep off into the distance in an endless desert. Ripples of light dance like a serpent across the surface of this vast, breathtaking wasteland. A glance to the left reveals golden shafts of light beaming down from the heavens. I pause and soak in the energy and then, in an instant, as my arm penetrates the surface of the lake, the peace and tranquility is broken and I begin my morning swim: energised and contented.

******************

A shimmering bay reveals itself below me as I cross the Lake Hawea dam. An iridescent, paua-shell blue, green and silver shimmers in the bright, bright light of the morning. The perfectly flat water somehow seems to be leaping off the surface of the earth; an abstract three-dimensional hologram - deep, sharp and crisp.

******************

Late in the evening in the half hour before sundown, clouds are floating along the ridges of the southern alps. To the west, the divine 'light of God' pierces the clouds like daggers. A real world reflection of the fearful depiction of the wilderness of a romantic landscape painting: imposing, scary and awe-inspiring. To the east, the light has an altogether different effect. Pure, soft, cotton top clouds billow up from a menacing saw-toothed ridge, appearing to be illuminated by a brilliantly white light from the inside: inviting, comforting and cuddly.

******************

Not only have the romantic painters been at work in this landscape, but the impressionists have applied their palette to this beautiful springtime scene. Renoir could easily have painted on the canvas of Glendhu Bay. Tiny ripples on the water disturb the mirrored image projected on to the bay and it is instantly transformed into a brilliant impressionist painting. Tiny brush strokes fade into each other, brilliant technicolour becomes muted water-colour. What was real now becomes imaginary.

Masses of lupins punctuate the roadside as if put there by Monet himself: every shade and hue of purple, pale and delicate through deep and moody. A brilliant contrast of colour against the harsh, inhospitable, sunburnt countryside.

******************

In the last hazy light of the day, a truly idyllic world. An emerald sea of grass. A surging golden tide of rape seed. A silhouetted cardboard cut-out scene: tractor and plough. A spray of dust wafting from the wave of earth churned up by a plough. A delicate agricultural sea-mist hanging in the still, cool air of dusk.

This is a truly special part of the world. The tag of most scenic iron distance race in the world is fully justified and, as a holidaymaker yelled to me from an inner tube as she floated down the Clutha River on the blisteringly hot day that I attempted to do a 3 hour run, "This beats Disneyland any day!"

******************

A bit of a haematoma

2010-12-06T22:59:00.000+13:00

Unfortunately, I picked up a bit of an injury over the weekend that has interrupted training. I have strained a muscle in my right shin which is causing quite a bit of a haematoma (bruise) in my lower leg. It's quite painful when I run and, even though I managed an hour long run on it on Saturday, I had to miss yesterday's long run. This is the second time I have had this type of injury - the first being when I was training for the Southland marathon last year - but this time it seems to be less severe.

Thankfully today is a rest day and I don't have another run scheduled until Wednesday. I'm hoping it will be okay on the bike tomorrow evening and it should be fine in the harbour (at 7am tomorrow).

Plenty of rest, a compression stocking and regular icing seems to have accelerated the healing process and it is starting to loosen up already. When the gall bladder infection settled down in August 2001, though, the haematoma I had then was a little more serious and in need of a bit more attention than a bit of rest and some ice.

31 August 2001, Austin Hospital

My condition has stabilised now and I haven't had any gall bladder attacks or fevers for about 36 hours. The nurse was in about half an hour ago to tell me that they would be transporting me back to Bethesda Hospital later today, but that they first wanted to change my dressings.

Changing my dressing is still pretty painful (see A bit sore) but I have become used to dealing with it. The major problem at the moment is that the swelling around my abdomen has become so bad that the cross bars on my external fixators have begun to rub on the wounds where the fixators enter my body. As a result I have developed a couple of really nasty ulcers around the base of my fixators that are now also requiring some attention. When I am rolled on to my side these new wounds are enlarged ever so slightly as the weakened skin and flesh tears a little. So, by now the wound around the right fixator is about the size of my thumb and very ulcerated (just like a mouth ulcer).

The swelling is now also making it extremely difficult to roll me to redress my gravel rash wounds on my torso and it takes several people to undertake the whole operation: two or three to roll and hold me and one to dress the wounds.

The team have just come in and they roll me to the right to reveal the wounds on my left. They are dressing the wound as normal and finish without a hitch. I'm back on my back now and I'm pumping the morphine button (PCA) to make sure that I am ready for the wound on my right which is much bigger and sensitive than the one on my left.

"Okay, ready?" says the nurse. "As ready as I'm going to be," I reply. I'm being rolled slowly and carefully on to my side. "STOP!", I shout, "I can feel a tearing by my fixator!" They stop and it check out my fixator wound and it turns out that there is a small tear in my wound. It's not really painful and it's not bleeding, but there is a small amount of clear fluid seeping from the wound. "I think we can carry on with the dressings now," says the nurse as she mops up the fluid.

The rest of the dressing process goes without a hitch and they turn their attention to the new/expanded wound around my fixator. It's 'oozing' (as they describe it) quite a lot of fluid so they pack it with gauze to soak it up.

An hour passes and they come back to check it. As they remove the bandages covering the gauze, the full extent of the oozing was revealed. It has soaked right through the gauze and is beginning to pool in the plastic undersheet lining the bed. A quick discussion and the charge nurse decides that the underblacket and plastic sheet will have to be replaced even though I am being relocated later today. So, here we go again, more rolling and more pain...

This is going to be quite complicated as they are going to actually lift me off the bed and the swelling hangs off my backside whenever that happens. It's bloody excruciating and, without the crane that Bethesda has, I am not sure how they are going to manage it.

Step one: they roll me one way and bunch up the blanket and plastic sheet as far as they can. Step two: they roll me the other way and bunch the rest up. Step three: lift and remove. Problem: It's impossible to lift me. "One last try," says the charge nurse, "it has to come out." "One, Two, Three, Lift!" They all lift and the chrage nurse pulls as hard as he can. "Ahhhh! You ripped me!", I yell. All at once they replace the plastic sheet and return me to my back.

Now there is a real problem. The ooze is coming out really quickly. The gauze is becoming sodden as soon as they pack my wound. They keep repacking it and eventually it slows a little. Any time I move I can feel it running down the inside of my thigh, but there isn't much pain so I ignore it.

A couple of hours have passed and I am in the back of an ambulance being tranferred back to Bethesda. The ooze is pretty disgusting by now and I am soaking wet. The ambulance arrives at Bethesda and I am weheeled back into the rehab ward. It feels great to be back. I've only spent a couple of days here, but it feels much more welcoming than the Austin, perhaps because I know it's going to be home for a while.

The ambulance drivers hand me over to the nrusing staff and explain about the ooze. A nurse takes a look. "Oh, my God!", she says. I am sure that can't be a good thing. A few minutes later Mary-Lou, the registrar, appears and looks at the wound. There is an instant look of shock on her face as she realises what is happening. "Right let's get this sorted", she exclaims. "I can't believe they sent you back like this. How long has this been like this?", she asks. I explain what had happened.

"You have a massive haematoma in your torso and now it has direct access to the outside. We are going to have to milk it. Are you okay with that?" Mary-Lou explains. Of course, I agree but I ask for a quick explanation of what they are going to do. In essence, she explained that it would be like squeezing a massive pimple.

The process begins and litre after litre or haemoserous fluid is milked from my body. It is caught in a funnel held against my hip and placed in a bucket. After about an hour of milking 9.5 litres of fluid is collected in the bucket and the oozing has largely subsided. The swelling that has plagued me since my accident is now gone and bags of limp skin hangs from my side. What a relief.

Post script: This event turned out to be a turning point in my recovery. Now I was unburdened by the swelling that had caused so much pain. It was also the source of my infection as this massive abdominal haematoma caused by a closed internal degloving injury has been communicating through my wounds with the outside world.

That night I underwent surgery to clean the ulcerated wounds around my fixators, insert six suction drains that would continue to drain the haemoserous (the clear fluid that you get on wounds that helps the healing process) from my torso and to do a thorough cleaning of my gravel rash wounds.

The whole process has given me a new starting point. A new lease of life. A renewed determination to get through this. Tomorrow is a new beginning.

Take away the pain

2010-12-03T00:13:00.001+13:00

In a previous post on motivation (motivation part 3 - pain) I talked about how pain can be a good thing. How the pain of training actually feels good to me. Well this weekend, I had a power of good pain.

Sunday's 6 hour/175.8km ride redefined some of the pain that I have had in training. While my legs and groin were nothing beyond the normal long ride aches and pains (and a the odd bit of numbness), the pain that I experienced in my feet and neck were a distraction that I could not ignore.

Nearing half way on the ride my right foot began to smoulder. Just a whiff at first and nothing that a good scrunching of the toes couldn't fix, but by the time I reached the four and half hour mark both feet felt like flames were emanating from their soles. I had no choice but to dowse them with water and the momentary respite was pure bliss. However, the embers continued to glow and by the time I got 15 minutes down the road the flames had me in agony once again. I was able to stand it for another 15 minutes until I had to take both shoes off to stamp out the flame. I kid you not, the heat was so intense it felt like my feet were literally on fire! Thank goodness taking my shoes off helped otherwise I doubt that I could have gone much further nor could I have got off and run a marathon. (Apparently this is a relatively common problem related to the positioning of my cleats, the inner-soles and the type of shoe that I have. So hopefully I can sort this next week).

The other problem was an aching neck from being in aero position for such an extended period. It got so bad that from about 120km on, I begged for any hill at all so that I had an excuse to sit up and pedal. I never ever thought I would experience such a rush when I saw a 2 km climb coming up ahead. I literally screamed 'WOOHOO', when I saw it looming in front of me. Thank goodness that the Challenge course is so hilly; I don't think that I could handle a flat course for six hours.

Despite this, once again, this is good pain and I am glad that I endured it and I am a stronger person because of it. The pain that I went through on the night of 28 August 2001 (see help needed) and through 29 August 2001 was debilitating and disheartening, especially given I had thought that I was through the worst of it following my accident (see when the journey really began, the journey continues and a bit sore).

Early afternoon, 29 August 2001

I am staring at a tall, broad-shouldered surgeon at the end of the bed who is trying to figure out how he is going to use the endoscope to remove my gall bladder later today. You see, it turns out that last night's pain was acute acalculous cholecystitis (AAC) or a massively inflamed gall bladder and it has got to come out. "The problem is I usually rest the scope on your pelvis and you have all this bloody scaffolding in the road," says the surgeon in a very concerned voice. He bends down to get a better look at the angles and rotates his hands over my pelvis to mime the actions that he would have to perform. "Nah, there's no way we can get in through there." He pauses. "We'd normally go in through the belly button, where you've already got that scar, with the scope and make a couple of small cuts up here [pointing to just below my sternum]. But, there's just no way that is going to happen. The other option is to make a 30 centimetre incision from here to here [drawing a long arc on his torso that follows the bottom of his rib line]."

Oh my god! They are going to have to cut me open. Surely that is going to be dangerous in my state!?! Is this really necessary, surely no one died from a swollen gall bladder? Those I.V antibiotics must be pretty powerful, surely they'll work?

The surgeon interrupts my tarin of thought, clearly seeing that I am experiencing a considerable amount of agnst. "I think we are just going to have to wait and see what happens. It will have to come out, but there is just no way that we can do anything about it right now."

"What about the pain?", I ask. "That should subside, but if it doesn't we will have to do something about it", replies the gentle and caring giant of a surgeon. "Lets just wait and see. You have enough on your plate right now, without having to deal with more surgery. Once you are stronger and these fixitors are removed we can have another look."

I am not sure that I can really comprehend what this means. Is it life threatening? Is the pain going to return? Am I going to be able to eat (I haven't been able to eat since I vomitted up last night's dinner)? I don't think I can really deal with any more pain. My wounds are bad enough and that pain through the night and into this morning was absolutely out of this world. Please, make it go away...

Post script: It turns out that AAC is actually very dangerous! According to the Merck medical manual:

Acalculous cholecystitis typically causes sudden, excruciating pain in the upper abdomen in people with no previous symptoms or other evidence of a gallbladder disorder. The inflammation is often very severe and can lead to gangrene or rupture of the gallbladder. In people with other severe problems (including people in the intensive care unit for another reason), acalculous cholecystitis may be overlooked at first. The only symptoms may be a swollen (distended), tender abdomen or a fever with no known cause. If untreated, acalculous cholecystitis results in death for 65% of people.

It is a rare form of gall bladder infection that can be caused by (amongst other things) other surgery, massive whole body infection (sepsis) - which I was now being treated for - or blunt trauma.

The pain has been described by many as the third most painful affliction known - behind child birth and passing a kidney stone.

Just over a week ago my Mum had her fifth or sixth gall bladder attack (from gall stones, which is less dangerous, but equally as painful) and the next time she has to go to the emergency room they will remove the stones. I don't know how she has put up with so many attacks. Once was enough for me, but in the end I had two further attacks. The second was while I was still in hospital and still with the fixitors in and the surgeon once again said that they would have to wait. The third was some months after my accident, once I had been released from hospital.

I was walking along the street with Carleen and we were about 10 minutes' away from home, when out of the blue the pain struck. It struck so hard that I partially collapsed and had to save my fall on a wall. I tried to walk, but the pain intensified and I could go no further. Thank goodness for the doctor that was passing on her way home from her shift at a local hospital. She spotted me and knew instantly that I was in trouble. She got out of her car and rushed over to us (probably thinking I was having a heart attack). I explained what it was and she helped us to her car and drove as fast as she could (which wasn't that fast because it was rush hour) to the nearest emergency room. Once there she handed me over to the ER staff and they administered morphine, but they couldn't remove it then and there as they wanted me to go back to the hospital that treated the orginal injury.

In the end I was referred to a private surgeon who said the best way forward was to claim on my medical insurance as this would be the quickest route to surgery. He was right and the next week, my gall bladder was removed and AAC confirmed.

I have no lasting effects, except I can't eat very fatty foods or drink a lot of beer (not a bad thing really).

Giving back

2010-12-02T22:39:00.000+13:00

Over the last few weeks several things have made me think back to the time of my accident. Not least of these has been the fact that there have been a spate of fatal and near fatal collisions between vehicles and cyclists. the result has been several 5 fatalities and several hospitalisations. How many more have to be killed or mamed before something is done to protect cyclists?!

Probably the accident that has been closest to the bone for me was the accident that almost claimed the life 12 year old Blenheim girl Jacqueline Wyatt (see Campbell live story at http://www.3news.co.nz/Teen-cyclist-recalls-collision-with-truck/tabid/367/articleID/188518/Default.aspx). Her accident bears an uncanny resemblence to mine and, like me, she is battling with a smashed pelvis and multiple other injuries. Her story moved me to tears and really cut Carleen up as she recalled the hard times that we went through during my long and painful recovery and neither of us could bear the thought poor Jackie and her family having to go through all that we had been through.

I want to help Jackie and the Wyatts through this ordeal in whatever way I can and I have started the wheels in motion to try and get in touch with them and some people raising money to help them out. I am not quite sure what I can do to help, but I have some ideas so watch this space.

A little milestone - thanks to you

2010-11-29T22:13:00.000+13:00

This month my blog will exceed 1000 page views for the month. Wow!

When I started out I hoped that I might get a few people to read it, so 1000 page views in a month is amazing. Thanks for reading and I hope you have enjoyed it and will continue to do so.

BTW: I'm pretty sure it's not Mum reading everything dozen's of times, I don't think she knows how to navigate her way around the blog that well. :-)

Big weekend

2010-11-28T22:47:00.000+13:00

Just a very quick one before heading to bed for some well earned rest - lots more blog material to come.

Yesterday, I did a 7 hour training day, including all but a few ks of the bike course (175.8km) in
6 hours 18 minutes (including 3 stops to fill up my water bottles). Wow! Its a bloody long way, but I made it. I also tried to run at least 1 lap of the run course, but in 31+ degree heat, I had to walk most of it and was completely overwhelmed by the temperature.

Today was a record November high for Wanaka, so now I have trained in snow, frost, hail, rain, gale force winds and record high temperatures.

Post-Race Blues - AGAIN

2010-11-24T21:48:00.000+13:00

Really flat today. I had run session at lunchtime that just felt crap. My knees and hips were stiff and I just didn't feel like going hard, even though I had intervals to do (5 x 3 min @ 3-5km pace). I was able to do three at the pace, but had to back off a little for the last two. Overall, I guess it wasn't a bad session, I just didn't feel so good doing it.

This evening I went for swim in the harbour with Geoff, James and Alice (a fellow Challengee and pretty good swimmer) and I just couldn't be arsed. I did everything that the others did, but I was a long way behind and I stopped on too many occasions to be that effective.

I guess (as Alice pointed out), that's what you get from five and half hours of racing. It also doesn't help that I have a little health problem (starts with 'h' and ends with 'roid' and very large - OUCH!) that has been causing me a lot of pain since the race. It was extremely bad overnight and this morning and I was able to do little else but lie on the sofa until about 11am. A visit to the doctor this afternoon for a remedy seems to have relieved the pain for the moment. When the doctor is doing the examination and he says "OH! Shit, that will be painful", you know that it's a goodun'.

Nirvana

2010-11-22T22:33:00.000+13:00

It's crazy to think that just 10 months ago I was contemplating spending the year training for the Lake Wanaka Half Ironman as my ultimate goal for the next 12 months to see if I might be capable of pulling off a full iron-distance triathlon and here I am in November sitting at the computer having completed my first half ironman and itching to do Challenge Wanaka in a little over 50 days. What is even more amazing is that a little over 48 hours after the completing the South Island Half IronmanI have little more than a few areas of chaffing and a bit of tenderness in my left calf: I feel fantastic!

Unlike any other race I have done, the weekend was the complete package: travelling up with Coach Geoff discussing tactics, racing and the meaning of life; preparing our gear for the race (sometimes in our own wee world and other times sharing our thoughts); sussing out the course the day before; catching up with other triathlon mates/acquaintances at the mote; bettering my own expectations on race day; and then, pigging out at Macca's without feeling the slightest bit guilty (Geoff and I worked out we would have to have eaten at least 10 Big Macs to replace the energy we had burned during the race).

The race itself was an amazing experience, full of emotion, excitement and physical challenges. There is obviously too much to discuss here, but there were some moments in the five and half hours that will be etched in my memory forever. So, rather than give a blow by blow description, I have selected the most poignant and emotional moment. In my mind, I had imagined that I would be most moved by crossing the finish line. I was emotional as I crossed the line and could only manage 'Half way there - bring on Challenge Wanaka!' over the PA when the race director asked me how I felt (any more and the emotion would have boiled over). However, nothing at all could have prepared me for what I experienced at the start line:

Approximately 8:20am - Race Briefing, Lake Hood, South Island Half Ironman.

The race director has been giving instructions for the last 7 or 8 minutes and, to be honest, I haven't taken much of it in. I know that the swim course is completely different to what Geoff and I had thought when we came down to the lake yesterday, but the rest has not registered at all. I have spent most of the last 10 minutes in 'the zone' looking at people but not really registering who they are, hearing the briefing but not really listening and knowing that it is cold and breezy but I can't feel anything. My attention is grabbed momentarily as I spot Rachel Harris, who has provided the most amazing virtual support through myblog, and I briefly contemplate going to introduce myself, but in an instant I decide that this would only be a distraction that I cannot afford.

Suddenly a sea of black wetsuits and multi-coloured swim caps begins to slowly pour down the bank towards the lake and my fellow competitors begin to enter the water. I find myself drifting along peacefully in the tide until my feet become immersed in the warm and comforting waters of Lake Hood. I pause... Then, dive head-long into the dark, yet inviting water.

Time stands still and I am overcome by an amazing and utterly awe-inspiring sense of calm. The water ripples across my cheeks and I am surrounded by bubbles that seem to glisten like stars. Still submersed, I pull one breast stroke and glide effortlessly amongst the shiny tan weed. The moment seems like an eternity and I don't want it to stop.

This moment is the start of a new beginning and the end result of a lot of hard work. My journey is just beginning, but I have arrived. I feel immensely powerful and incredibly vulnerable all at once. I am ready for, yet apprehensive of, what lies ahead. I am fearful, but not afraid. I should be nervous, but I am at peace. This is nirvana. Whatever lies ahead, all the training, all the sacrifice, all the pain has been worth it for this moment.

I am blown away by the power of what could have been no more than 5 or 10 seconds of bliss. Come 15 January 2011, I will use this to focus my mind and give me strength.

Half way there

2010-11-21T22:14:00.000+13:00

Just a quick note to say that I knocked off the South Island Half Ironman yesterday in a time that surprised even me. I was hoping for anything under 6 hours and I managed 5:34:48. I am absolutely stoked!

The swim was easier than I thought, albeit a little slower than I think I was capable of. The bike I averaged 31.6km/hour over the 90km and I ran my seventh fastest half marathon (of the 17 that I have done since 2008). I even managed to be almost half an hour faster than our team effort at the Lake Wanaka Half earlier this year and was faster on all legs except the swim.

Full race report to follow tomorrow... it was an amazing experience full of heaps of emotion so it should be an interesting post.

By the way: The body is feeling amazingly good today. I just hate to think what it might be like tomorrow when the DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) sets in. I hope that this isn't the calm before the storm.

All packed and ready to go

2010-11-18T22:31:00.000+13:00

Just finished packing for the road trip to Ashburton tomorrow. Geoff and I are leaving Dunnos at 7:30am and heading out on the highway to the might metropolis of "Ash Vegas". The plan is to be there early afternoon to suss out the course, have a bit of a splash in the lake and practice tranistions.

Geoff is competing too, but currently has a popped rib and hasn't been able to run for 8 days or so. He may have to walk some or all of the run, so there is a slim (and I mean paper thin) chance I'll be able to catch him on the run. He'll smoke me on the swim and bike, so he will have to be down to a crawl.

The forecast for race day is for rain and a southerly change, so that might make things a little interesting. The rainfall maps are only showing light rain, winds up to 10km/h so that shouldn't be too bad (fingers crossed) and the temperature is supposed to be a mild 18 degrees . I can handle the rain and I don't mind the wind on the run, but I hate the wind on the bike. Oh well, I can't control the weather so I will just have to take what comes.

My race plan is to concentrate hard on technique on all legs (including transitions). I'm going to keep it simple so that I can stay focussed. My time will be what it will be and I am sure that I have done enough work to finish strongly (for a 40 year old over-weight guy who was run over by a truck - whatever that might mean). It is very clear in my mind that this is not the end goal, just a step on the way. Sure, I will have my race face on and, sure, I will try my hardest, but I will be making sure that I pace myself for a strong finish rather than going nuts and then fading at the end.

Ash Vegas, here we come!

Are you out there?

2010-11-17T22:56:00.000+13:00

Just thought I'd try a little experiment.

I am able to track how many page views I receive (between 550 and 700 per month). I also know that about 80 percent of the page views come from New Zealand and 20 percent from overseas and a large proportion come from people who link from the Challenge Wanaka home page. However, I have no idea how many people are actually reading my blog. I have 6 official "followers" and 10 people receive an email of each posting, plus I know of about 6-10 other people who read it (including my Mum - Hi Mum), but beyond that I have no idea where the other 500 plus page views come from (is it 50 people reading 10 pages or 500 people reading just one?).

I am really keen to know more about who my audience is. So, if you read this, I'd love for you to leave me a brief comment in the comments box below - even just a "Hi" would be great.

PS I am going to be getting back to the story of my accident over the coming weeks. I am now on sabbatical until April and I will have a more flexible timetable and will be in writing mode for work. Once I get into the groove with writing (academic or otherwise), the words will just flow. So I hope you are prepared for a lot more posts over the next 9 or 10 weeks.

Running off the nerves

2010-11-17T22:36:00.001+13:00

My lunchtime ride today was crap. I couldn't concentrate, my mind wandered and 18km/hour felt like hard work while 35km/hr was a breeze. The nervous energy was making my mind play games with me.

Throughout the day I have received all sorts of emails from people who've read my blog and its been great. (Keep'em coming folks, I'd love to hear from you even if I don't know you - it's a huge buzz to get feedback from people.) There has been lots of really sage advice and lots of reassurance. I also had a rub from Coach "Magic Hands*" Geoff (on a niggly hamstring) this afternoon and we chatted about the race and how to approach this evening's run session.

I had a nice short set of 3 x 3 minute efforts at threshold with 3 minute rest intervals so it was a matter of warming up, concentrating for 15 minutes or so and warming down. I decided to approach the reps by concentrating on one thing - HIPS FORWARD! I started each rep well, concentrating hard on getting my hips forward while maintaining leg speed. However, in each set I also lost concentration after a minute or so as a vision of this weekend's race would pop into my head (the last kilometre of the race, starting on the run after transition, the finish line, etc). It would take me 20 seconds or so to get back on track, but I managed to get back to thinking 'hips forward' and the pace would pick up again. When I looked at my Garmin graph of each effort when I got home, you could see where I lost concetration as I slowed significantly. In the end I manage the first two reps at 4:24/kilometre pace and the third at 4:09 pace. That has well and truly settled the nerves - for now at least.

Six months ago, if you had told me I'd be running at 4:24 pace at all I would have laughed at you, let alone 4:09 and for 3 minutes. Secretly, I now can't wait to break the 4 minute mark for a threshold run like that. I now believe that it is possible. Hell, I can do better than that, I know it will happen and soon! Bring it on!

Thanks to everyone for all of the advice today and thanks again to Coach Geoff for a training program that seems to hit all of the right notes at just the right time.

* "Magic hands" - I think Alison Shanks is the one that called him that, but it is true. He works miracles with those hands.

Nerves and excitement

2010-11-17T09:46:00.000+13:00

Only three days until my first half ironman and the nervous energy is really starting to build. Actually, it's not built as such, but gone from 0 to 100 in no time flat. I find myself concerned about the unknown - what is transition like? how long is the run out of the water to transition? what is the weather going to be like? what is the water temperature? As such, I have been searching for as much information as possible to try and calm the nerves, but I am not having much luck finding things out. It's driving me nuts!

Yesterday I was fine, but today I'm really on edge. I am not nervous about my own ability to pull this off: I have done the work and I have trained hard. Geoff has put me through my paces and I have done (almost) everything that he has asked of me. This really is just another step on the road to Challenge Wanaka, but I don't like going into a race not knowing what to expect.

I hope today's training will help me get rid of some of this nervous energy. I don't think I can last three days at this level of heightened excitement!

The Three Musketeers

2010-11-14T13:43:00.000+13:00

Geoff, James and I met at 8:30am this morning for a swim in the harbour at Vauxhall. Well, that was the plan anyway, but by the time we were ready the waves were about half a metre high and messy as hell. So, I suggested we drive down to Macandrew Bay to see if it was flatter there.

Geoff jumped in the front seat of my car fully kitted up for the swim (two swim caps, a neoprene cap, wetsuit and wetsuit booties). James, in his wetsuit, squeezed himself into the back seat like a slightly over-stuffed stuffed toy - arms unable able to move to his side and knees barely able to bend. Off we went - the three musketeers.

At Macandrew Bay we stood in front of the car contemplating "will we, won't we", "it's still pretty high", "yeah, nah...maybe", "if we stay close to the shore, but what about out there". We must have looked pathetic standing there all dress up and nowhere to go (swimming).

In the end we headed back to Vauxhall more than a little disappointed and ready to swim this afternoon instead, until Geoff suggested that we try the other side of the harbour near Watercooled Sports. It was perfect there when we got there, but there are no buoys or poles in the water as markers for us to mark our swims. The answer: walk around the shore (along the busy Portsmouth Drive) and mark it using the Garmin GPS I have borrowed (mine is broken and off for replacement).

What a sight! All in wetsuits, two in slippers, one in running shoes walking along the water's edge glancing at the GPS and then looking around for land marks to spot from the water. Katie Menzies (the coach that helped me get started with my training), passed us on her bike and she yelled out something about how mad she thought we were getting in the water on a day like today.

Then back into the water we went with the usual hesitation and whoops of discomfort as the cold water seeps into the back of the wetsuit through the zip. The water has actually warmed up heaps as we have had a week of 25+ degree temperatures. We rattled off 2 x 400 metre warm up, 8 x 100 metre swim to run transitions and 4 x 400 metre continuous sets.

All in all a bloody awesome swim by the three musketeers!

Woohooooo two!

2010-11-12T23:03:00.000+13:00

Geoff and I have been doing some 2km swim time trials every Friday for the past fortnight. The trial consists of 400m freestyle, 100m pull buoy, 300m freestyle, 200m pull buoy, 200m free, 300m pull buoy, 100m free, 400 pull buoy. We time the splits (although last Friday's didn't work out so well because of some watch issues) and the full set.

The first week (29 October) I took a just on 43minutes to complete the full set and I took 8:40 to do the first 400m (freestyle) and 8:20 to do the last (with pull buoy). Today I smashed this time by doing 40:49, including 7:56 for the first 400m (my first ever 400 under 8 minutes) and the last at 7:36.

Interestingly most people are slower with the pull buoy as you have no kick, but I am significantly faster. This obviously says something about how much my kick is adversely impacting on my speed. The good news is that everyone (including me) swims faster in a wet suit and all my open water swims in NZ will be in a wet suit.

Based on the time that I posted today and things like I won't be doing my clumsy turns every 25m or resting six times and I will be wearing my wetsuit, I reckon I should be able to complete the swim at the South Island Half Ironman next Saturday in somewhere close to 35 or 36 minutes. I'll be absolutely stoked with that, but I'll take anything under 40 minutes.

I also did 30 x 100m freestyle earlier in the week and didn't tire at all until the 26th rep. Previously I have been tiring after about 1.8-2km, so the swim fitness is also on the improve. Overall, then, my swimming is on the improve and things are starting look good. Still heaps of room for improvement, but at least I am heading in the right direction.

Woohooooo!

2010-11-12T07:33:00.001+13:00

It's official. I am now under 100kg for the first time in about 12 or 13 years. I know I was 99kg on Sunday after a 2:30 run, but this morning I was just under 100kg when I got up.

I've now lost just over 35kg (26% of my original body weight).

Next target: under 90kg by race day. That's about 1kg per week and anything below 91 kg will be the lightest that I have been since I was about 16 years old.

Some more milestones

2010-11-07T21:12:00.000+13:00

In the last month I have passed a few more milestones.

Since I began my programmed training I have now completed the following:

Swim: 172km (in 86 hours) - milestone 150km
Bike: 4,293km (in 156 hours) - milestone 4,000km
Run: 985km (in 90 hours) - milestone of 1,000,km will be reached this week
Total: 5,450km (in 332 hours) - milestone 5,000km

I have also managed three weekends of racing in a row, including a sub1:45 half marathon and this week I have run 56.2km which is the most I have ever run in a week.

I went below 100kg in weight today for the first time in about 12 years. I was 99kg when I finished my run today (25.5km), but this is likely to be a temporary drop below 100kg as I was pretty dehydrated by the time I finished (loosing around 2.5-3kg in fluid). I'll take it though! Regardless, I have been under the 30 BMI 'obese' threshold for all of the last 3 weeks.

In the next few weeks I will undoubtedly set some more milestones:

My first half ironman (20 November)
My first 20+ hour training week
My first 300+km week

As Coach Geoff pointed out this afternoon as we bobbed around in the Otago Harbour (I reckon the water is about 11 or 12 degrees, so it's not bad... who am I kidding it's still bloody freezing, but it makes me feel really alive), I've come along way since my first few weeks when I said to him that there was no way that I could do 12 hours of training in a week.

What goes up, must come down

2010-11-04T10:58:00.000+13:00

It was great having three races in three weekends (Hill Free 10km, River Run Trail Series Half Marathon and Cromwell Half Marathon), but by the time I had finished the third I was mentally (and physically) exhausted and for the last week or so I have found it incredibly hard to train. Regardless of how I approach a race - whether it is 'just another training session', a targeted pace or an attempt at a PB - I always invest a lot of mental and emotional energy into it and that has been incredibly draining.

As I think I have mentioned before, in the week leading up I begin to visualise the race, running through the course in my head and going over what I will be doing and how I will be feeling at various points in the race. In training I focus much more on the technique and on doing the little thinsg right. I know I am no pro, but its in my make up to do these things, especially now that I have the advice of Coach Geoff to guide me along. This all creates an enormous amount of energy that makes you feel so incredibly alive in the lead up, but the high is inevitably folllowed by a low that is hard to get out of.

Three weeks of high meant that there has been a pretty deep low to follow. It's not that this low has made me feel depressed or that I haven't wanted to train, its just that when I have trained it has been difficult to concentrate and even if the body is willing the mind is struggling to propel me forward (although, for obvious reasons, the body has been a bit tired too).

I have found that the best way to overcome the low is to train with someone else wherever possible. A run the other night with little bro' Chris and a ride with Coach Geoff the next day were much better sessions than any other. Its the swimming that I am finding the hardest to get back up for. I can maintain some good sets or reps, but never for more than 20 minutes or so. I guess it is a combination of the completely solitary nature of swimming (in the pool you are literally totally immersed in world of your own) and the fact that it takes (me) an incredible amount of concentration in an attempt to get everything just right (however futile that attempt is).

There is a 20km off-road running race this weekend that Geoff is doing and that he suggested I consider, but I have decided that I don't want to have another period of peaks and troughs. I am going to focus on getting up for the South Island Half Ironman on the 20th. Bring it on!

By the way the tendonitis is on the mend. I no longer have pain when I walk or run and, once things warm up in the morning, I have more mobility in my foot. Thanks to Geoff's magic touch - he is the most amazing massage therapist in the world. It's amazing having a coach that is so good at motivating me, so technically savvy and who knows and understands how my body works and how to repair it when it is broken.

It's official...

2010-10-29T23:32:00.000+13:00

I have just completed my race entry for Challenge Wanaka 2011... There's no turning back now!

What a weekend

2010-10-25T20:57:00.001+13:00

All of a sudden I feel strong again!

Despite the ongoing tendonitis in my right ankle, things took a huge upward swing this weekend. I feel awesome (albeit a bit sore) after a simulation half ironman weekend. On Friday morning Geoff had me complete a 2km set in the pool after a 20 min/700m warm up. The 2km included only short rests (no more than 10sec) and took me 44 minutes.

On Saturday I did the bottom half of the Challenge bike course around Lake Dunstan. At just over 91km in 3:17 (plus a rest at 40km where I met Geoff), I was stoked with that time given that I wasn't exactly over doing it. There was a moderate southerly and the temperature was in the low 20s so the 40km from Luggate to Cromwell was a bit slow, but the 50km back was wind assisted and we were flying. I did draft behind Geoff for about 15km, but even when I was on my own I was able to get into a nice rhythm at about 34km/hour.

Then on Sunday, I entered the Cromwell Half Marathon (my 3rd time doing this event), even though I wasn't sure that my foot would last the distance. It was warm and there was a very strong northerly wind (as usual for this race). At the start line I set my strategy as a slower than usual start and remain steady. I also remember thinking that a PB wasn't on the cards so just go with the flow and at that point I resigned myself to the fact that I would be unlikely to ever break my magic figure of 1:45 for the half marathon.

How wrong I was! I smashed my previous year's Cromwell time by 6 minutes 50 seconds and my PB (set at Wanaka) by 4:06 and most importantly I broke 1:45 by almost 2:30 minutes. Even if you correct for the 350 metres or so that the course is short I was comfortably under 1:45 (approx 1:44:14 at my average pace). I averaged under 5 minutes per km (4:56) for the first time ever in a half and only the 3 kilometres into the howling wind and the second to last kilometre were significantly over 5 minute pace. I was placed 26th overall (up from 42nd last year and 95th the year before) and my time on this course has improved by more than 16 minutes in two years. I am absolutely stoked!

So my simulation times (albeit not all in one day and definitely not all in race conditions) are as follows:
2km swim 0:44
91km bike 3:17
20.75km run 1:43
Total 5:44

That all bodes well for the South Island Half Ironman in a few weeks and hopefully has me on track for Challenge Wanaka in January.

I also managed to christen my wet suit this morning (Labour Day) in Lake Hawea with a half hour play around (about 10 -15 minutes to get used to the freezing cold water plus 5 x 80-100m reps). Very refreshing on a beautifully clear and calm Hawea day. Absolutely out of this world!

New gear

2010-10-20T23:38:00.000+13:00

I have just purchased a new wetsuit and a new bright red lycra trisuit. Neither of these are particularly flattering, given that they are made out of rubber and lycra and are incredibly fitting. So look out anyone that sees me at any races in the near future. My bulgey bits, lumps and bumps are going to be on display! Very sexy! NOT!

Worrying sign

2010-10-20T23:35:00.000+13:00

Over the last few weeks I have been trying to manage a problem with my right foot. It's a repetitive stress injury to my peroneal tendon and I thought that I was getting on top of it. Geoff has been massaging it and I have iced it almost every day for the last week, but over the last 24 hours it has become more persistent.

I hope this isn't going to interfere with training. So far, its actually been fine most of the time that I have been training (as it warms up it tends to get less severe or even disappear altogether), so it was a worrying sign tonight when I couldn't really shake it while doing my run intervals. Any activity (even just standing) sets it off and it can be a very intense pain.

Time to up the frequency of ice treatments, etc and, fingers crossed, I can knock it on the head.

"Bonked" (almost)

2010-10-19T22:02:00.000+13:00

Even though I have had to miss the odd session over the last fortnight with work commitments, it feels like I've had a pretty intensive period of training. I've also got a bit of a sleep deficit after the Commonwealth Games which had more than its fair share of post-midnight finishes and last night I didn't finish my work until 12:50am and then woke up at 5:50am and couldn't get back to sleep. Not to mention the fact that last weekend I had a 10km race and then on the Sunday just past I did my 4th fastest half marathon (1:50:43) on a tough off road course (Race 1 of the River Run Trail Series - an awesome race put on by the Challenge Wanaka crew).

As a result, tonight's ride was a complete disaster. The mind was willing (well actually it was tired from the lack of sleep) but (in the immortal words of Carol Beer of Little Britain) the "legs say Noooo". Another cold southerly blast had forced me indoors to the Moana Pool gym to use a spin bike and as soon as I started pedalling I knew that I wasn't going to make it to the 2 hour mark as per my schedule. I just had no energy, my glutes were sore and my current foot injury kept flaring up. So I cut my ride short by an hour and (rather than sit up late and do more work and get further behind on the sleep) I am heading straight to bed and will (hopefully) be sound asleep in no time flat.

I still plan to do the Cromwell Half Marathon this weekend, but have the 10k race as a back up plan if I am still feeling flat. I am pretty sure that I will be ok by Sunday if I get plenty of sleep this week and don't over do it in training, but I am not going to completely bonk just for the sake of a half marathon. Challenge is the ultimate goal and I want to get there in one piece, so I am taking Coach Geoff's advice to listen to my body and do what it says while still keeping as close as possible to the schedule. That means more sleep and dialling back a bit on the effort when I have an easy session like tonight.

Weeks 25-29 - Spring time(?!?!)

2010-10-11T00:51:00.000+13:00

The last five weeks have been full of all sorts of weather surprises. I have trained in everything from glorious 21 degree days, to driving rain, heavy snow, 140km/h winds and even a short swim in the Otago Harbour (13 minutes was more than enough with the water just 10 or so degrees). I raced the Dunedin Half Marathon on gorgeous sunny, calm and warm early September day and today (one month deeper into spring) I ran in the Hill Free 10km in driving rain with temperatures barely above 5 degrees (snow falling on the hills surrounding the race).

There have also been a number of things that have distracted me from my training. Work has been busy and I have had a few days of meetings and short trips out of town that have made scheduling training difficult. The Commonwealth Games (especially the cycling) has also been a little bit of a distraction (but also a bit of inspiration).

Week 25 (6-12 September) - including the Dunedin Half Marathon (see All Hot and Bothered)

Swim: 4 session totalling 10.35km in 4 hours 59 minutes
Bike: 4 sessions totalling 165.1km in 6:28
Run: 4 sessions totalling 49.5km in 4:36
Total: 12 sessions totalling 225km in 16:03

Week 26 (13-19 September) - supposed to include the last of the Winter Duathlon series but cancelled because of snow.
Swim: 3 session totalling 7.3km in 3 hours 28 minutes
Bike: 4 session totalling 209.5km in 8:27 - including a 105.8km long ride on Saturday
Run: 3 sessions totalling 19.4km in 1:54
Total: 10 sessions totalling 236.2km in 13:49

Week 27 (20-27 September - 8 day week because did ride on Monday ) - including Sweat7/Challenge Wanaka Training Camp with Sam Warriner.
Swim: 4 session totalling 5.55 km in 3 hours 39 minutes - including a technique session on the camp.
Bike: 3 sessions totalling 188.1km in 7:20 - including two Challenge-course rides.
Run: 4 sessions totalling 54.8 km in 6:01- including a 24.4km run with Geoff on the day before the camp.
Total: 11 sessions totalling 249.55km in 16:55 (8 days straight without a rest day).

Week 28 (28 September - 3 October - 6 day week because of the Monday while on camp)

Swim: 4 session totalling 6.3 km in 3 hours 07 minutes
Bike: 3 sessions totalling 120.4km in 4:03
Run: 3 sessions totalling 39.4km in 3:54 - including a 2 hour run that ended up being exctly 21.1km
Total: 10 sessions totalling 166.1km in 10:94

Week 29 (4 -10 October) - Friday off with what I thought was a head cold, but probably turned out to be an extremely bad dose of hayfever.

Swim: 3 session totalling 5.65 km in 2 hours 31 minutes - including 28x100m in one session
Bike: 3 sessions totalling 203.2km in 7:45 - including a 105.4km (4:00) ride in a howling Southerly
Run: 4 sessions totalling 38.1km in 3:46 - including my first ever 10km race
Total: 10 sessions totalling 247km in 14:01

Today, I completed my first ever 10km race. I ended up doing about 1minute slower than I had hoped for(47:55), but still managed a top ten finish for my age group (10th of 19 in the 35+ masters males), in the top half of the men's field (25th of 54) and and well inside the top 20% of all runners (28th of 148). As I said above, it was barely over 5 degrees so not the best of conditions and I had done a 4 hour ride in the howling wind the day before. All in all a pretty good day at the office.

I have just finished watching the men's (cycling) road race at the Commonwealth Games (hence the very late posting). What a fascinating race and a brilliant tactical race by the Kiwis and Aussies. They ditched Cavendish with about 10km to go - brilliant! Aussie first and Hayden Raulston (NZ) second, Scotsman 3rd - well done boys!

98 days to go!

2010-10-08T22:43:00.000+13:00

Holy crap! Less than 100 days to go! Where the hell did all that time go?

I know I keep saying 'bring it on', but the 100 day to go mark is a scary milestone. Before I know it race day will be here. Surely pre-race nerves don't start this far out from an iron-distance race!?!

A little bit crook

2010-10-08T22:37:00.000+13:00

I have come down with a nasty head cold over the last few days. I was able to train yesterday and managed an excellent Ironman effort ride and easy 60 minute hill run, but this morning I woke up feeling like crap. I decided that it wasn't a good idea to head to the pool and that I should take it easy for the day. So the sofa became my friend for the day and I spent the day marking some assignments.

I must have been worse than I thought, as I almost fell asleep about 2:30pm. I was just completely exhausted. By 5pm I was feeling much better and this evening I feel like I ready for the weekend's training that's ahead of me.

On the evening of 30 August 2001 I was also feeling unwell, but this time it was much worse and I would not recover quite so easily.

30 August 2001 (9 days post accident)

Today was a bit of a milestone for me. I managed to clear the blockage and, with the help of that crane (see Help Needed), got the bowels in motion for the first time since the morning of 21 August. I'd like to say that it was a huge relief, but the fact is that it was extremely painful and I am not looking forward to having to go through it all again tomorrow.

At dinner time I wasn't feeling so flash and really didn't feel like eating. To be honest, eating hasn't been that easy anyway. The dietician came the other day as they are concerned that I haven't been eating enough protein. I need it to help maintain my wasting muscles. The only problem is that even the smell of cooked meat turns my stomach. So when I didn't feel up to eating dinner tonight, I didn't think much of it.

Carleen has just left for the evening and the change of shift has started. At the 9:30-10pm change-over the night nurse comes on for the half hour or so before the others leave. There is a new night nurse on tonight. She's a Russian-Australian and she's nice enough albeit a little bit of the sterotypical Russian. The afternoon shift have just have just left, the lights are turned down and the ward goes quite.

It's bloody cold in hear tonight. So much so that I am shivering uncontrollably. I am all hazy in the head too and I am not really sure what is going on around me. I can hear something going on out at reception, but can't make any sense of it. I press the nurse call button.

"Yes, dear?" she says in a soft soothing voice. "Can you please get me another blanket? It's really cold in here." She presses here hand on my forehead. "I think you have a fever," she says and she reaches for a thermometer and presses it under my arm. Then, whammo I get the most intense pain in my stomach and a massive pain down my right shoulder. This is different to the intense burning pain that I experienced from the accident. It's like wave after wave of unbelievable cramps. I want to bend double to help relieve the pain, but I am unable to becuase of my injuries and this seems to double the intensity of the pain.

The pain is all consuming, but I can just hear the nurse say "41" and she heads out of the room. She seems to be away for a very long time, but she returns and hands me some pills and a drink to wash them down. I take the pills and drink the water, but it just comes straight back up. She heads out again and returns with a small cup of a think white liquid. "Take this, it will stop you from vomitting", she says calmly. I get half of it down and then wretch it all back up. I can't stop wretching and, unbelievably the pain intensifies some more.

This isn't good. Something is seriously wrong. Why isn't she getting a doctor? I need help (again), but no one is getting it for me. Eventually someone comes to give me an injection and the vomitting stops, but I am still shivering like crazy and the cold cloths aren't making any difference. The pain begins to subside and I drift in and out of consciousness. Still cold and no very scared.

The pain returns over and over again all night and when Mary-Lou (the registrar) arrives in the morning my temperature is still hovering around 40. Mary-Lou examines my stomach and then heads out to call the surgeon in charge of my case. She seems very concerned and I can hear her having stern words with the night nurse.

When she retruns she tells me that they are going have to urgently send me back to the Austin Hospital for treatment. "We don't know what is wrong, but they will be able to sort things out." Carleen has arrived and I am concerned that she does not get too upset, but the truth is I am shit scared myself. I thought that I had come through the worst of it, but this pain tells me that something is seriously wrong. An infection? Internal bleeding? Something much worse?

Within 30 minutes, after going through the agony of the transfer from the bed to the gurney on top of the on-going pain in my stomach, I am in the back of an ambulance and speeding my way back to the hospital I just came from a couple fo days ago. One step forward and two steps back...

I am still here

2010-10-04T19:03:00.000+13:00

Just a quick post to say that things are still trucking along nicely. Its been a while since I've had the chance for a full update (lots of work, etc) and I will be on to that some time this week, but here are some recent highlights:

Training weekend with Sam Warriner that far exceeded my expectations. The small technique tweaks that I was able to gather have already proved to be very useful. More about this later in the week.
The weekend on the training camp was also hugely beneficial as I was able to spend for days thinking about nothing but training and with Coach Geoff along too, I was able to learn heaps more from him too.
The last few weeks I have also been focussing on doing the trunk exercises that Geoff gave me a few months ago, but that I had only been doing intermittently. These are really starting to pay dividends, especially with my running. Having Coach there for the last 2km also was a huge motivating factor (Thanks Geoff, I really do appreciate it!).
The start of an 8 week build in my program this week included a 2:45 Brick (2 hour bike to 45 min run transition). Using the stuff I learnt on the camp I was able to get off the bike and run at 5 minute km pace (30seconds/km faster than I have been able to do to date in training). Still slow, but a HUGE jump up for me. I then followed that up with a run the next day which ended up being exactly 21.1km in 2 hours.
Yesterday I moved up to the 40-44 age group. Yep, I am officially 40 years old and in the best shape of my life.
I have now started to loose weight again. I have dropped from 104 to 101.5 and I haven't yet completed all of the food diary stuff for my coach anmd therefore haven't tweaked my nutrition. I can't wait to see what happens when I do sort out my nutrition - I'd better get those diaries to Geoff.
Motivation is still high. Bring it on!

All hot and bothered

2010-09-28T20:20:00.000+13:00

Firstly, sorry for the long delay since my last post. It's been a mad few weeks and its difficult to fit in all my work (including some evening meetings), sixteen or so hours of training plus core exercises, keeping my training records up to date, starting a food diary to try and get my nutrition sorted, a half marathon and a training camp (more about that later), talking to the senior pupils at East Taieri Primary School about my story... and somewhere in amongst all of that ... life. So the blog has had to go on hold for a little while.

Needless to say I am still working hard and (hopefully) making small gains in my base fitness. I am staying as close as possible to the program that Coach Geoff has me working on, but the weather has been all over the place and some sessions have had to be move indoors. Its been a month of big contrasts in the weather. I've trained in everything from driving rain, to heavy snow (last Saturday on our long ride), bitterly cold winds and gusts of up to 140km/hour (last Wednesday night when doing some speed work - I've never run so fast in my life). Contrast this with a balmy (well, high teens anyway), sunny day on Sunday 12th, when I ran the Dunedin Moro Half Marathon and my body doesn't know what it is up for.

The Moro Half turned out to be a bit of a disaster all round. The day started out with perfect conditions: overcast, about 12 degrees and not a breath of wind, so I was all psyched for a good race. I had already done 13 hours of training for the week and had a light pool session a couple of hours before the half marathon, but I was feeling good. I wasn't setting out to do a PB, but I just thought I'd settle into a rhythm and see how things panned out.

After my pool session I headed up the hill for a quick second breakfast and to pick up little bro' Chris. I figured he'd have some wholemeal toast that I could lather with jam and peanut butter, but no such luck, so I settled into a large bowl of rice bubbles, milk and a couple of tablespoons of sugar (Mistake No. 1). I figured, I'd had enough in my first breakfast and didn't go too hard in the pool and thought that there would be energy drink on-course (Mistake No. 2), so figured some high GI nutrition would be fine to get me through.

As I said, conditions couldn't have been better. It's a tough course as far as the local half marathons go and the large crowds mean that PB's are very difficult, so I was pretty relaxed, but when the gun went off, I thought 'what the hell, I'll give it a bit of nidge today' (Mistake No. 3). The first 1,500 metres was slow as all the foot traffic slows everyone up, but after that I settled into a nice comfortable rhythm at about my PB pace. In the last few halfs, I'd been having trouble getting back into rhythm after a drinks station and my pace had slowed by 10 seconds or so after each one, but Geoff had given me something to try and it had worked a treat. In fact, after the first drinks station (5km), I even picked up my pace for about 1,500 metres (Mistake No. 4). By the 7km mark, though, my right hip started to tighten and I started to feel like I was running with a flatty. There was no power at all in my right leg and it was starting to drag a little.

I managed to cope with the pain in my hip through to the 12km mark, when I was distracted by a conversation with a fellow competitor and it seemed to disappear. I picked up the pace a little again (although, by now a PB was gone) and headed up the Roseneath Hill. By now the sun had been streaming down for the past 20 minutes and I sweating like I was in a sauna and, while I had managed to get plenty of water on board at the drinks stations so far, there was no energy drink. Then, half way up the hill, WHAMMO! My head went into a tail spin! My vision was a little blurred and just putting one foot in front of the other became and huge undertaking. I could no longer run in a straight line and I knew this wasn't a good sign. I had seen people pass out in this race before so I decided that I'd better not end up in the gutter and shipped off to the hospital where they would tell me to lay off the training. Time to walk.

I ended up walking a few times between over the last 6 km, but still managed a course PB (1:58:36, 90 seconds faster than last year). I was in a sorry state at the finish. My legs almost gave way on me and I had to lay on my back for a good 10 minutes and I needed food and drink and lots of it. It took me a full hour to come right, but at least I wasn't as bad as the guy that had passed out with 2km to go.

Lesson learnt, though, get the nutrition right and drink more. I also learned what it was like to literally run on empty and some of the early warning signs for when this sort of thing kicks in. I reckon this is gonna come in handy during Challenge Wanaka next January when the temperature could peak well into the 30s.

9/11

2010-09-11T21:55:00.001+12:00

Today is the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 disaster in New York. Carleen and I have just watched a documentary of footage shot by the general public as the Twin Towers came down and memories of the day it all happened came flooding back.

11 September 2001 (Bethesda Rehabilitation Hospital)
"Wake up, wake up, you have to see this!" says a nurse as she shakes my shoulder.

"Wha... Wha... What?" I splutter as I slowly open my eyes to see the night nurse turning on the TV.

It's only bloody 6am, what the hell can be so important that they needed to wake me. Its the first bloody descent night's sleep I've had in ages and she decides to wake me!

"Holly shit! Is that real? What's happening? When did this happen?" I bombard the nurse with questions.

"It's live. It's happening now. A plane just crashed into the World Trade Centre!" She replies.

A moment later the footage switches to the second tower and we witness the plane slam into the side of the building.

A million thoughts are going through my head. Is this an accident? Is it happening anywhere else? Are we safe in Australia? Oh, my god, I hope Carleen is safe? Why?...

This is no accident and that this is no minor incident. What I can see is beyond belief and I don't want to believe that it's true. I can't handle the fact that not only is my own world in turmoil, but this could be the start of the end for the rest of the world. I begin to sob.

The panic that is gripping the entire western world is palpable and I am lying here helpless, unable to be with the ones that I love to comfort them. I hope Carleen isn't watching this. I hope she will be here soon. I need to hold her.

Oh no! Someone just jumped! I sob uncontrollably...

Oh my god! That building just collapsed. Will it ever end!

Oh my god! Make it stop! Make it stop!...

By the end of the day, I was completely exhausted and I had shed more tears than I thought it was possible for any individual to have. I thought the tears were over and that I had come to terms with my own plight. Now what was I to do. That evening the images that shocked the world were indelibly etched on my memory and forever more those images will transport me back to that hospital bed and to the raw emotion and heart ache of 9/11/2001.

Help Needed

2010-09-07T23:48:00.000+12:00

I am struggling to loose weight and I am in desperate need of help with my nutrition. After reporting that I had reached the milestone of 102.5kg, I have now bounced back to around 104kg (although I can be as high as 106, depending on the time of the day).

My nutrition is haphazard at best and I really need professional advice. I am struggling to balance the need to maintain my energy levels (especially now that the volume of training has increased substantially) with the need to loose weight. Ideally, I need to loose around 1kg per week between now and race day without being so lacking in energy that I can't train.

Can you help or do you know someone who might be able to help? Of course, I am prepared to pay for on-going tailored meal plans, but if anyone knows anyone that would be willing to help me out of the goodness of their heart (or at least at a discounted rate), I'd be extremely grateful.

I needed a lot of help a couple of days after arriving at Bethesda in 2001, too. But the help I needed was of an entirely different nature.

28 August 2001 (7 days post accident)

This morning I am feeling heaps better, but I am still very frustrated by this huge swelling. Its bad enough being on my back 24/7, but I can't even move my pelvis off the bed at all and its bloody uncomfortable. I am able to tilt the top half of the bed a bit, but because the swelling is putting a lot of pressure on the wounds around my ex-fixes (external fixators), I can't manage more than about a 20 degree bend at the waist. At least I am able to sit up a little - one small step in the right direction.

The nurses are great here and I have really taken a shine to one or two of them, plus one of the registrars that is looking after me. Adrian, a very camp male nurse, and I get on like a house on fire and he has the most wicked sense of humour. Mary-Lou, the registrar, is also extremely caring and has really taken the time to explain things to Carleen and I and she has the most compassionate bed-side manner. The rest of the staff are wonderful too and this has made my irst few days here a huge boost to my moral.

My room-mate, Harry, isn't much for conversation. He is 85 and was run down on a median strip as he waited to cross a pedestrian crossing. He has alzheimers and is mlmost completely deaf. Sadly, it seems that he has no relatives to visit him and although he tells the nurses that his wife was just in the other day, they told me that he has never been married. Ocassionally we talk about what's on the telly and how good the meals are in here, but we don't talk more ten times a day.

The staff are a quite concerned that my immobility is going to cause me to get bedsores that could be a serious threat to my recovery. In fact, Mary-Lou said that she has read of cases where people have people have died from their bedsores. The result is that they have ordered me a state of the art airbed that continuously pumps air through the matress to keep it inflated and they can adjust the pressure to relieve pressure spots on my body as they arise - very cool, I can't wait!

Of more immediate concern for the nurses, however, is doing something about the response to the first question from the nurse this morning.

"When was the last time you had a bowel motion?"

"The morning of the accident", I responded.

"Ah", said the nurse, "that would be a problem. I can't believe no one has picked this up from your chart. Do you need to go?"

"Nope. Don't feel like it and don't think that I could even if I did. I can't move off the bed."

"We'll have to do something about that", she said. "And, you're going to have to learn to go on the bed".

What the! How the hell am I supposed to take a dump with Harry in the room and reception right across the hall from my room door. Let alone on a bed pan, lying flat on my back. I could feel my but cheeks (or what was left of them) attempt to clench, but there was just no muscle left - another problem I thought. Besides, how are they going to get a bedpan underneath me. - with a crane.

The nurse returned a while later with some senokot.

"Here this should loosen you up and give you the urge to go", she said as she handed them to me with a glass of water. "Make sure you drink plenty of water over the next few hours too, please"

At this point you might be wondering how someone goes for a week without getting out of bed to go to the toilet. Simple: a) the shock has sent my system into a tail spin and I am completely constipated, and; b) my peeing is on auto pilot as I have two catheters (one indwelling - you guessed it, in my 'you know what' to act as a splint for my torn urethra to heal - and one suprapubic - that goes through an incision just above where my pubic hair used to finish directly into my bladder to drain it of urine). So, number ones are under control, but number twos are now somewhat of a problem!

I take the laxative, but now I am very concerned about how, when I do get the urge, I am going to get on the bed pan. Just rolling me from side to side to clean my wounds is still a major exercise and it is still incredibly painful as the swelling moves around my pelvis. It will be impossible for them to lift me just to get a bedpan undeneath me, let alone find my bum hole amongst all that swelling. Oh well, I guess they have it all under control.

Its now the end of the day and I can feel some rumblings going on and I call the nurse.

"I think that I might need to go to the toliet soon."

"I'll get you the bedpan. I'll be back in a minute."

"No rush, I don't think its coming in any hurry."

She has just returned with a small green oval dish that looks more like something the dog (a Chihuahua, rather than a Saint Bernard) would drink out of than something that I expected to go to the toilet on.

"What am I supposed to do with that?", I say with a smile.

She smiles back, "I'll put it under you if you like." She pulls the curtains and lifts the bed clothes, only to discover just how difficult the task will be. She has a couple of goes, but there is just no way she can get it in position. "I think we need reinforcements. Can you hold on while I get some help?" "Sure, I'm not going anywhere and I'm not entirely sure that I am ready to use it anyway."

When she returns she is accompanied by an orderly and two other nurses and... A CRANE! "We are going to use this to lift you off the bed so that we can get you on the bed pan properly. We put the harness underneath your hips and legs and lift you with the crane. It saves all of our backs and should be best for you." 'Great', I think to myself, 'oh well, any sense of dignity I had left went out the window the moment they started cleaning the ooze off my indwelling catheter anyway, so what harm can being lifted on to the karzee by a crane be?'

"I think that is going to be quite painful." I suggest. But I know that this needs to happen. They begin passing the harness underneath me as carefully as they can, but they can't help but move the swelling so that it pulls on my wounds and I wince in pain. It takes them a full ten minutes to strap me up and hook me up to the crane. "It doesn't look very safe. Won't it fall over?, I ask. "Its lifted people much bigger than you."

They push the button and the crane slowly winds into action. The slack is taken up and they pause, then it slowly lifts me off the bed. The pain is excrutiating as the entire weight of the swelling moves to immediately below my pelivs, pulling down on my fractures and slightly tearing the skin around where my ex-fixes enter my my body.

"Stop! Put me down!" They lower me to the bed. "I can't do it."

"We have to try", one nurse says, "you will get very sick if you don't go."

"I know, but please get the pan under me as quick as you can."

We try again and this time they lift me completely off the bed and I feel the fractures in my pelvis move. "Quick!" I say through clenched teeth and the pan is slid under me. The crane returns me to the bed and by now I am covered in beads of sweat from the ordeal.

"Are you ok?", enquires a nurse. I nod in reply, but its a lie. I am in a lot of pain and the worsed thing is I know I am going to have to go the whole ordeal again to get off the bloody thing - and I'll probably have to repeat it every day for the next untold weeks.

"We'll leave you alone now", says the nurse as pulls the curtain behind her. A lot of good that did. Harry is talking with one of the other nurses and I can hear every word of the conversation the nurses at reception are having. They may as well have been sitting on the edge of the bed for all the differnce th curtain made. And, by the way, did no one tell them that it is physically impossible to shit while lying flat on your back!

I've persisted for half an hour, but to be honest I can't even manage to engage the right muscles and the pills really haven't made that much of a difference. I call the nurse and they all pile back into the room to get the crane into action to lift me off.

An incomplete mission, but I did appreciate all of the help. Maybe we'll have better luck tomorrow.

Weeks 22-24 - Build-Rest-Build

2010-09-07T22:27:00.000+12:00

Sorry that I haven't had much of a chance to put many posts up for the last few weeks. I have been (and continue to be) really busy at work and with the increasing training load too, it is becoming quite difficult to fit it all in. Anyway you know that I had an enforced rest week the week before last and it seems that this is paying off as last night I was able to email Geoff to say that for the first time in three or four months I felt 'strong fatigued' (knackered but feeling some how stronger).

The last three weeks have been a case of build (duration and intensity), rest (recouperation and regeneration) and then building from where I left off the week before. Unfortunately something cropped up in the first of the build weeks which meant that I missed a 50 minute run and my rest week was more of a rest than I had hoped, but with the travel and conference, I fitted in what I could. Last week, however, was definitely my biggest week yet, although a could of sessions were done indoors because of the weather and training late afternoon when the light was fading. The last three weeks, then, have looked like this:

Week 22 (16-22 August) - The week nine years ago when my accident occurred.
Swim: 4 session totalling 8.8km in 4 hours 29 minutes
Bike: 4 sessions totalling 168.8km in 6:53 - including a 91km (3:45) ride on Saturday
Run: 3 sessions totalling 28.4km in 2:50
Total: 11 sessions totalling 206km in 14:11

Week 23 (23-29 August) - rest and out of town.
Swim: 2 session totalling 4.8km in 2 hours 32 minutes
Bike: 1 session totalling 44.1km in 1:29 - as a brick session
Run: 2 sessions totalling 11.5km in 1:04
Total: 5 sessions totalling 60.4km in 5:06

Week 24 (30 August - 5 September) - on 5 September 1992 Carleen and I were married (I don't know how she has tolerated me for the last 18 years!?)

Swim: 4 session totalling 9.825 km in 4 hours 54 minutes
Bike: 4 sessions totalling 239.9km in 8:44 - including a 101km (4:10) ride in a howling Southerly on Saturday and 2 indoor session
Run: 4 sessions totalling 37.1km in 3:37 - including 1 indoor session
Total: 12 sessions totalling 239.9km in 17:15

The next six weekends are jam packed and it looks something like this:

Sunday 12 Sept - Moro Half Marathon (Dunedin)
Sunday 19 Sept - Race 4 Winter Duathlon Series (North Taieri)
23-27 Sept - Challenge Wanaka Training Camp (Wanaka)
Sunday 3 Oct - I TURN 40!
Sunday 10 Oct - Hill Free Half Marathon (Outram)
Sunday 17 Oct - Trails Half Marathon (Hawea) - I'm an unlikely starter for this one as Carleen is away.
Sunday 24 Oct - Cromwell Half Marathon (Cromwell)
Then its only five weeks to the South Island Half Ironman (Ashburton)

Are you a mamil too?

2010-09-01T19:27:00.000+12:00

A friend sent me this link to an article about mamils (Middle Age Men in Lycra). For some reason he thought it sounded like the article had been written about me... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10965608

On the road again

2010-08-30T21:20:00.000+12:00

Please excuse the Willy Nelson lyrics, but it works for my swimming experience last Thursday. I was out of town again and finding it hard to fit in much training. I managed a run and a couple of swims between last Sunday and the Friday just past (partly because I was a bit crook on Monday and Tuesday, but mostly because I travelled much of Wednesday and spent all day in a conference on Thursday and Friday).

Thursday morning's swim was an interesting one. You see, I was in the small town of Blenheim and I got a very clear indication that I was firmly in rural New Zealand when I visited the local 25 metre pool. Part way through my session the Seniors aquaerobics class took over half the pool and the stereo started pumping out both kinds of music - yep, you guessed it country AND western. I should have guessed something was up when two of the old dears hopped into the pool with cowboy hats on and the poolside instructor turned up wearing cowboy boots, denim shorts and checked shirt. Needless to say, I kept my head down and bum up so I couldn't hear John Denver and Co singing and twanging away and rest intervals were a little quicker than the norm so I could get away from the pool as soon as possible.

Friday's exercise class wasn't quite as off-putting, but the 1980s hits from what sounded like the 'musac-remix' tape (you know, that awful trash they play in elevators, malls and cheap hotel lobbies) weren't exactly to my taste in music either. The pool also got a bit overcrowded with teenage girls more intent on gossiping than swimming clogging up the only available lane. Despite this, I managed to plough through and get two 2.4km sessions done and I was especially pleased with my long swim session where I took almost 2 minutes off my 500metre time.

Five days after my accident in 2001, I was also on the road again as they moved me from the Austin & Repatriation Hospital to the rehabilitation hospital (Bethesda) at the Epworth in Richmond.

26 August 2001 (five days after the accident)

Last night the nurses told me that I'd be heading to Bethesda today. I have to say that I am quite excited at the prospect of moving to a new hospital as it means that they think that I am on the improve. However, I am not at all keen at the prospect of being moved from one bed to another and then into an ambulance. To be honest, I am petrified!

The swelling on my upper legs and torso has continued unabated since I have been in the ward and any movement is extremely unpleasant and can be quite painful. I am concerned that the sheer mass of the swelling is going to cause some major pain for me and some significant issues for those trying to move me. I have also been confined to this bed for the last four days, only being rolled from one side to the next for dressing changes and the occasional sponge bath (and no, unlike the movies, they are not at all erotic). Moving off the bed is a huge unknown for me and the pain that just rolling me from side to side causes, means that the anticipation of a larger (albeit still small) move is sending me into a mild panic.

A nurse comes into tell me that they will be moving me later in the morning and that they will leave my dressing changes for Bethesda to do. What a relief, I can't bear the thought of having the matron doing my dressings again (see A bit sore). Carleen is here so that will take my mind off the move for now, but it is always there in the back of my mind and my nervousness continues to bubble away below the surface.

A couple of hours pass and by now I am extremely apprehensive, so that when the nurse comes in and says "Okay, its time to pack up and get ready to go now", I am completely beside myself. "Okay", I say putting on a brave face that wasn't convincing anyone. "You'll be fine", one of the nurses reassures.

A team of staff come into the room (a couple of nurses and orderlies plus the two ambulance drivers), ready to transfer me to the ambulance gurney. "Don't worry mate, we've done this a thousand times before," says the larger of the two ambos. His size should be enough to reassure me, but I can't help but have images of being dropped between the bed and gurney flash through my head as they prepared the slider (a plastic board used to slide patients between beds).

They work to manoeuvre the blankets and slider into position and they are all strategically located around the bed ready for the signal to move me. "Cross your arms across your chest, mate," directs the ambo. 'Does he mean that I should be saying a prayer?', I smile to myself. I cross my arms, take a deep breath and close my eyes. Then on the command of the ambo the whole team, in unison, begin lifting me. "Stop!", I exclaim. Something doesn't feel right. "I think something is caught." They look underneath and move some of the blankets and try again. This time I move effortlessly (but not without pain) to the gurney.

The ambos commence strapping me onto the gurney starting with my feet and working their way up. I feel like I am in some kind of magic act. Are they going to bring out a saw and cut me in half? I don't think that would be wise, I am sure that swelling is hiding something nasty and we wouldn't want to get that all over the floor.

They are at my waist now, trying to figure out how they are going to strap that part of me in. I am way too big and there is this whopping great scaffolding sticking out of my pelvis - four titanium pylons drilled directly into my pelvic bones connected on the outside by a criss-cross of beams that held it all in alignment. If you lift my glamorous hospital-issue night gown, my (hairless) pelvis looks like a huge marshmallow that is about to have a bridge built across it. There is no way that you can put a seat belt and buckle across their. With a bit of pushing and shoving and an extension strap they manage to shove as much of the bulge as they can underneath the strap and they clamp it shut. A most unpleasant exercise, but at least I haven't been dropped on the floor and I shouldn't roll on to the floor of the ambulance.

Being on the move again, is weird. I had thought that it would be weeks, if not months, before I was going to see the outside world but, for a fleeting moment at least, as we exited the hospital and I was wheeled into the rear of the ambulance, I could breathe fresh air and hear the sound of the city around me.

In the back of the ambulance, I find it disconcerting being so high up as I feel like the gurney could topple over at any second. I heard the wheels clip into place and the safety brackets clamp me in place, but it still doesn't feel right. As we move off ever so slowly I am also now fully aware of how uncomfortable this short journey is going to be. The forward momentum of the ambulance mans that all of the fluid that has built up inside me surges towards my feet. Oh my God! What a seriously weird and very painful sensation, especially as the fluid moves through my pelvis and across the still mobile fractures. It's nowhere on the scale of the pain of getting my dressings changed, but painful nonetheless.

With every corner, every minute tilt of the ambulance left or right or forward or back and every acceleration and every deceleration the fluid surges left, right, forwards, backwards. "Can't you drive any smoother than that!", I call out to the driver. He just laughs. But I'm not joking. "No really, please, please it hurts a lot!", I plead. It doesn't seem to make any difference though and I continue sloshing for the whole 15 km journey.

At Bethesda (which is just a couple of blocks from our house) they unload me onto the forecourt and I can feel the warmth of the sun on my skin for the first time in almost a week. It somehow feels very reassuring. For some reason this place seems to make me feel much more secure too. Perhaps its just the fact that Carleen will be close by and that I am one small step closer to home.

Inside things are very different to the Austin too. Everything is new and there seems to be more staff around. I am informed that meals are ordered from a proper menu and I can have anything that I want any time of the day. While I know that my stay will be far from fun, this place is not going to be too bad at all.

The week that was (week 21)

2010-08-16T22:01:00.000+12:00

21 weeks down, 21 weeks to go! Fittingly then, I did my first 15+ hour and 200km+ week last week. In fact, it was a huge week all round as I also had a number of higher intesity workouts too. Geoff had estaimated that I would be doing 13.5-14.5 hours but for some reason it ended up being more than 16 hours.

Three Runs: 34.4km, 3hours 24 minutes
Four Rides: 196.5km, 8:05
Four Swims: 8.8km, 4:46
11 sessions: 339.7km, 16:15

Phew!

A bit sore

2010-08-14T00:00:00.000+12:00

My calf muscles have been a bit sore this week after a jump in intensity for the week. I hobbled around a bit for a few days and had nasty cramps in both calves and feet while swimming for the first part of the week.

In fact I don't think I can put all of the soreness down to just the lift in intensity. I am pretty sure that poor hydration has a lot to do with it as well. I came to this realisation yesterday, when I tried to give blood and the nurse said that she couldn't find any veins (fortunately she only stuck me with the needle once before giving up). I asked her if it could have anything to do with my training, she gave me an 'absolutely, yes' response. "You are dehydrated. When you are dehydrated your veins tend to go deep." That will explain the soreness and definitely the cramp. No cramp this morning after hitting the water bottle hard yesterday and the legs were much fresher.

The soreness this week pails into insignificance in comparison to the pain that I experienced a few days after my accident in 2001.

24 August 2001 (three days after the accident)
The sun is shining this morning and my room seems a little more cheery than usual. There is a new nurse doing the rounds. She seems quite young and she's a little bit matronly, with chest puffed out and an air of self-importance. She's nice enough though and was quite chirpy when she opened the curtains to reveal the sunny day outside.

"I am going to be changing your dressings today," she informs me. "We'll do it before your visitors get in." "Okay", I reply. She tells me to stock up on morphine, so I merrily push away on the button on my PCA. I know that no matter how many times I push the button it stops at an hourly maximum dose as soon as its reached, but I am keen to make sure I reach that dose as I am acutely aware of how painful the whole dressing change process is.

About 30 minutes have passed since the new nurse left to get all of the gear and she's returned with a small army of orderlies and nurses who are here to turn me over. It's a bit of a major mission as by now I have swollen to almost the entire width of the bed. My torso and thighs are bulging to the point of bursting and when they turn me all the fluid moves with me. The movement of the fluid puts pressure on my broken bones and my external fixators (the scaffolding holding my pelvis together) need to be kept stable so its a slow and extremely painful process just to get me in position to remove the dressings that cover about 20% of my body.

On my right side the dressings are in two sections: the outside of my entire right thigh and then from the back of my hip to my ribs. On the left there is just one dressing about the size of an A4 sheet of paper around my hip and lower back. All the dressings cover the area of gravel rash, where layers of skin and, on my right side, about a 1cm depth of flesh at its deepest were removed by the pavement as I was spat out the back of the truck.

The nurses and orderlies are in position: two on the right of the bed and one on the left to roll me and the new nurse ready to remove, clean and replace the dressings. They grab my bulging left hip and begin to turn me on to my right side. I scream in pain as the fluid surges across to the right of my body and the weight presses on my still freshly broken pelvis. "STOP! STOP! Can you go slowly, PLEEEASE!" "Sorry, sorry, we'll be more careful", a male orderly comforts. They gently begin rolling again and, even though it is still excruciation, I am able to bear the pain this time.

The new nurse begins to peel back the dressing and, as she does, the build up of 'ooze' from the wound begins to run through the opening, down my back and on to the plastic sheet placed underneath me to catch it. The air rushes in, just like it did in ICU (see Back in land of living) and the pain is instant. I wince and grit my teeth, but don't make a sound. The nurse removes the dressing and begins to clean around the edges of the wound. I can't help but hold my breath and clench my fist as the pain intensifies. Then I start to zone out a little and, I know that people are talking to me, but I have no need to hear what they are saying; I am trying to block out all sensation. This nurse is certainly making sure that everything is clean - that matronly character is really coming through in her thoroughness and it's excruciating.

'Just 5 more minutes', I keep repeating over and over in my head and eventually I am turned on to my back. "Half time, change sides", I manage to squeeze out with a forced smile. "Pump up your morphine before we start on the other side", one of the nurses suggests. I pump my thumb on the blue button frantically as if my life depended on it. They give me a few moments for the drugs to kick in.

They roll me gently and slowly on to my left side. I am facing away from the window now and steering at the side of my bedside cabinet. Matron peels back the dressings and I wince again. I clench every sinew of my body as I brace myself for the abrasive wipe of the gauze as it is rasped across my wound. The pain is impossible to describe - try to imagine a graze on you face being cleaned with coarse sand paper ... with a high speed orbital sander!!!! It's too much. I scream again at the top of my lungs - there is no way I can hold back. "Sorry, I have to do this", the matron implores. "No, no, please no," I sob like someone begging for their life. "I'm sorry, I have to." I feel the grip of the orderlies and nurse tighten to brace me for what is about to come. This is pure torture. This can't be right. With every wipe of the gauze the pain magnifies ten fold, until I can take no more and then, for a moment everything, goes black. The only noise is white noise ringing loudly in my ears and am no longer conscious of what is going on around me. Then, another wipe or two and the dressing is replaced.

As I am rolled on to my back again, I am now more aware of my surroundings. An older nurse comforts me as the matron cleans up the used dressings and leaves the room. I lean over the remaining nurse and beg her not to let the matron do my dressings again. She reassures me that she will pass on the message.

The matron never changed any more of my dressings!

The week that was (Week 20)

2010-08-10T21:17:00.000+12:00

Last week started out with some awesome training - swimming felt great, increased speed on my run and some amazing rides - but things conspired against me on a couple of occasions and I missed a brick (bike to run transition) session on Thursday and then, when I tried to make up for it on Saturday, I couldn't do the run because of the weather. It was a crappy weekend all round, with heavy rain and strong cold SW winds starting as I was half way through my ride. By the time I was back to the car, the streets were awash with torrents of water, my legs were so cold they felt like they were on fire and I was drenched to the core. I had to strip down to my shorts and shoes and put the floor mat on the driver's seat before a cold drive home with chattering teeth and very erect nipples. Sunday morning was worse, so I decided to delay my long ride until later in the day even though Geoff headed out early (and completely froze in the process). In the end, I didn't go at all as I couldn't face another fridged drenching.

My daugther (Emma) also had a birthday party on Sunday and I needed to look after my son (James). In fact, I didn't really need to look after James, I really wanted to. I feel like I have been neglecting the home front a bit lately and the opportunity to take James swimming was both a great way to spend some quality time with James and to give Carleen a few hours off to do what she wanted.

Overall, I guess it was a below par training effort this week and (quite rightly) Geoff let me know that I can't afford to have too many of these. I totally agree with him and to be honest on Sunday evening I was wondering if I could justify the time I need to spend training at the expense of family time. While I am not entirely convinced that I am not being totally selfish and I shouldn't just stop this foolish behaviour right now, I know that in the end there will be rewards for the whole family. I am already much healthier and less grumpy and I know that once I have completed the Challenge I will be more than ready to make up for lost family time and much more able to do so because of my increased health and better state of mind.

Week 20 Totals
One run: 9.5km, 58 min. (plus 20 minute aquajog recovery from duathlon)

Three rides: 99.7km, 4:08 hours.
Four Swims: 8.4km, 4:13 hours
Nine sessions (including aquajog): 117.6km, 9:39 hours.

Milestones achieved!

2010-08-05T19:10:00.066+12:00

So far this week training has been fantastic! Swimming has felt much better than it has to date, rides have been fantastic and I seem to be gaining a bit of top end speed in my running. Today, hasn't been so flash as I awoke with a headache and then felt flat all day, plus it was a wet morning and that stopped me getting out for a brick (bike to run transition) session. Awesome feedback from Coach Geoff, a fellow competitor and a complete stranger have also boosted my performance and filled me with a huge sense of pride.

It also helps that the milestones I foreshadowed a few weeks ago all came to fruition this week. The most significant of these for me is the fact that I am no longer an obseity statistic. Today, I weigh 102.5kg and have a BMI of 29.9, making me officially in the overweight range and not obese. I hadn't weighed myself for about 10 days as I had become frustrated that my weight loss had been painfully slow, but I have lost around 1.5kg in 10 days. I have now lost in excess of 32.5kg (almots 25% of my body weight) since I peaked at over 135kg about 2 years ago. The next target is under 100kg, then under 90kg and then 85.5kg and the 'normal' BMI range

The other milestones all relate to the total distances covered in my training so far:

500km running (504.9km so far at an average of more than 26km per week)
2,000km cycling (2,025.8km so far at an average of more than 106km per week)
75km swimming (later this week I will reach 75km total, that's around 157 lengths of a 25 metre pool per week)
Total distance 2,500km (now more than 2,600km)
By the end of this week I will have also completed over 150 hours of training.

Next targets (all about 8-10 weeks away):

750km running
3,000km bike
100km swimming
4,000km and 250 hours of training

Bring it on!

So close, yet so far

2010-08-02T20:57:00.000+12:00

Over the last few weeks I have started to get a real sense of the enormity of the task that I have set myself. Now that it is less than six months to race day I know that the time will pass very quickly, especially as the second half of the year is also my busiest at work and it always seems to go faster. So it seems as if Challenge Wanaka is just around the corner but I still have so much training to do and that scares me a little (well, actually A LOT!).

Somewhat pardoxically though, I find myself so excited by the prospect of the race that I wish it was here sooner. I know that I am physically not ready for the race, but somehow I feel that I have the mental stamina to just go out there and do it right now. Part of me just wants to get on with it, nail it and move on to the next challenge (whatever that might be).

I am not so foolhardy as to think that I could do it tomorrow, the next day, next week or even next month. So next year will just have to do. At least I have a very real and growing excitement driving me on to race day. Perhaps that is what this whole endeavor is actually all about - anticipation, dream and expectation, not just the acheivement of a tangible goal.

Coming in last and still winning

2010-08-01T21:55:00.000+12:00

Today I competed in the Otago Duathlon Champs: a 10km run, 38.5km bike, then 5km run. It was my second attempt and, like last year, I was the last open male home. However, unlike last year, I was close to the finisher in front of me and I wasn't the last over the line (I beat a female competitor and Michael and Chris's team).

The real victory, though, was taking almost 25 minutes off last year's time! I am stoked with my time (2:31:15) especially as the race was held in very strong winds and I my ride was slower than I know I can do. Every race gives me the opportunity to measure just how far I have come and today was no exception.

I was also chuffed with an approach from the race winner post-race. He came over and asked my name and asked if I was the guy that he had read about in the TriNZ newsletter. I told him that I was and he said "I think you are amazing!" I was blown away, as we have been competing in the same events for more than a year now and we have barely even acknowledged each other, yet he went out of his way today to come and tell me what he felt. I feel as proud as punch.

Weeks 17-19

2010-08-01T21:23:00.000+12:00

Because I have been so busy over the last three weeks, I have been a bit slack at keeping my training records up to date and, therefore, my weekly updates. Here is a brief report on what I've been up to:

Week 17 (Starting Monday 12 July)
Two runs: 20.9km, 2:02 hours.
Three rides: 158.8km, 6:14 hours.
Four Swims: 6.25km, 3:15 hours
Nine sessions: 186km, 11:30 hours.

Week 18 (Starting Monday 19 July - away in Auckland)
Two runs: 12.5km, 1:11 hours.

One ride: 59km, 2:13 hours. (including 20km time trial - 33:25min)
One Swim: 1.7km, 0:45 hours
Four sessions: 73.2km, 4:09 hours.

Week 19 (Starting Monday 26 July)

Four runs: 40km, 3:51 hours.
Three rides: 91.5km, 3:06 hours.
Four swims: 7.5km, 3:33 hours
Eleven sessions: 139km, 10:30 hours.
(including Otago Duathlon Champs 2:31:15)

Creative Juices

2010-07-26T21:53:00.000+12:00

Just a quick post to say that my creative juices are still flowing at the moment and training is back on track. However, my energy is focussed on getting a couple of publications done (work) and on teaching over the next couple of weeks so I might not be able to blog too much.

Needless to say, I am keeping up with the training and still constantly thinking about what I am going to write about next. Its just that contributions to the blog will be limited to small entries and/or a relatively small number until I get this work out of the way.

I am also chipping away at some ideas for a charity fund raiser as part of my race and I want to give that some focus over the next few weeks too.

I need a fix!

2010-07-21T21:50:00.000+12:00

I have only managed to train for 25 minutes since Saturday and I am going crazy. Two visits to Auckland have meant that it has been impossible to train and, even though Geoff and I planned a light week to account for this, I am frustrated that I haven't been able to do more than one run.

After two days without any exercise I started to get the shakes and started to feel achey in my shoulders and legs. Then today I have had headaches and just felt generally crappy. It doesn' help that I have had three flights already this week and that my diet has been crap because I have been eating on the run so much.

I think that I am experiencing withdrawal symptoms and I need a fix real quick!

Extra Long Ride

2010-07-17T19:13:00.000+12:00

Today I went for a ride with Geoff and James and it ended up being my longest ride ever. It was a grey, drizzly day when we left but there was only a gentle wind as we headed down the coast to Taieri Mouth. After a comfort stop at the domain we started on the long steep climb on the road to Waihola. What a climb! Sea level to 329m altitude over about 5 kilometres and then a rapid 60km/h descent.

Geoff pushed us along on the Taieri and my legs were really starting to tire as we headed up Riccarton Road. Only to be told by Geoff as he pulled up alongside me that I wasn't even half way in the Challenge Distance (86km). Not fair, there are no hills like we'd done in any ironman distance race. We were about 3.5 hours into the ride so I figured we were actually a bit past half way.

By the time we finished we had covered 109.4km in 4:30 (4:10 moving time) and I was completely knackered, but well pleased that I'd just done my longest ride ever. Since Sunday I have covered 241km and climbed almost 2,000 metres on the bike in 9:21, not bad for a beginner, I reckon!

Feeling guilty

2010-07-15T00:04:00.000+12:00

Yesterday I had to shorten my swim by 50 metres (2 x 25m kickboard sessions) and my planned 60 min ride by 20min and then today I was unable to squeeze in my interval run session because the start of semester has meant a new routine and it has been difficult to schedule everything. I know this is just a blip while I work into my new timetable (teaching, office hours, etc) and a one off trip to Auckland next week, but it still doesn't stop me feeling gulity about missed training.

I reckon I've done remarkably well at sticking to my schedule to date, only missing 4 or 5 sessions out of over 160 scheduled sessions and these were mostly because of illness or injury, so I can't really complain and I shouldn't beat myself up over it. I guess one of the things that I am gaining out of this journey is the sense of accomplishment that comes from maintaining discipline and this week I feel like I have let that slip.

At the time of my accident I also had massive pangs of guilt, not least of which was when my parents arrived at my bedside a couple of days after it all happened.

23 August 2001 (two days after the accident)

I am out of ICU now and in a normal ward of the Austin Hospital. My IV is connected to a blue box on the IV stand - a PCA (Patient Controlled Analgesia) - and connected to the blue box is a lovely bottle of morphine. As the pain begins to increase I can dial-a-dose with the push of a button and the pain goes away (well it is reduced, at the moment it never goes away). If I don't push the button it gives me a regular dose anyway as they want to minimise the pain to aid my recovery. It's all very clever and very useful and it's also designed so that I can't OD if I get too trigger happy.

Carleen was with me when we came up to my new room, but she has just popped out to meet Mum and Dad to bring them upstairs. My room is a single room and I am struck by the starkness of the bright white walls and the sun steaming in the windows. It is located on the 7th floor and, being a corner room, it has windows on two walls with commanding views over Heidelberg and Warringal to the hills of Eltham and beyond. Not that I care too much about the outlook, I am in too much pain and I'm stoned up to my eyeballs. But I am, at least, grateful that I can see that the world is still very real and that I am still very much in it.

My parents arrived in Melbourne this morning after a hastily arranged flight so they could be near me (their eldest son) and to help in whatever way they can. I can't imagine how they are feeling right now, especially as they have already lost a daugther. My sister, Lara, died in 1995 at the age of 19 after a routine surgical procedure to open up a hiatus hernia of her esophagus. She had been undergoing this procedure for many years as it was one of many conditions that she had as part of her Downs Syndrome. Despite the fact that when Lara was born my parents were told Lara would be unlikely to live beyond the age of 5, my parents were understandably hit hard by her death. My Dad, took it particularly hard and it had taken him years to come to terms with it (in fact I am not sure that he has fully come to terms with it yet) and now I had come close to being the second of their children to die prematurely.

Lara was a beautiful person, she touched everyone that she met. She was kind and gentle and had a wicked sense of humour despite her limited vocabulary and many medical conditions. She very rarely complained about anything even though her hernia meant that most of her food had to be pureed and she would often vomit as food got stuck. She endured dozens of surgeries and hardly a year went by where she wasn't in hospital. But somehow through it all she was a beacon of light and joy and we were all better for having had her as part of our family. Mum and Dad went through a lot of pain and heartache with Lara's condition and I can't imagine how hard it must have been for them to cope. For Gary (my middle brother), Chris (my youngest brother and Lara's twin) and I, Lara was just our sister. Sure she was handicapped and sure she had a lot of health problems, but she was our sister and we loved her to bits.

Mum and Dad are on there way up now and I am not sure how I am going to deal with them being here. We are all used to hospitals, illness and injury. With Lara in and out of hospital and Dad having several major back surgeries over a period of several years when I was a teenager, visiting someone in hospital is nothing extraordinary. I too, have had my fair share of hospital visits (rugby injuries, cycling accidents, chickens wrangling incidents...), but this was different. I almost died this time and I am far from being out of the woods yet. Given how Lara's death had been for Mum and Dad, I am really worried about how this is going to impact on them.

I was there when Lara died and because it had hit Mum and Dad so hard and I was the oldest son, I felt that I had to be the strong one and that I had to help them through. In a lot of ways I feel that on that day I become an adult (even though I was 24 at the time), I felt a huge sense of responsibility to pull Mum, Dad and the rest of the family through. Now as I lie flat on my back in the hospital I feel the same sense of responsibility, the same need to help Mum and Dad through, but this time I am powerless to do anything. This time I am the source of their dispair and not part of the solution. I am overwhelmed by guilt.

Mum and Dad are here now and we embrace, sobbing uncontrollably as one. We are utterly defenceless. We are vulnerable, raw and exposed. We are in 1995 all over again, only now I am not strong and I hate what it is doing to Mum and Dad.

A few milestones ahead

2010-07-13T21:27:00.000+12:00

Over the next few weeks I am heading for some significant milestones on the road to Challenge Wanaka:

Later this week it will be six months to race day.
I am nearing a BMI of under 30 - the first time I will be 'official' not obese in more than 10 years.
In the next fortnight to three weeks I should reach 2,000km on the bike and 500km running since I started training for Challenge and in before that I will break 2,500km in total.

Knowing that these milestones are not far away is helping to reinvigorate me after last week's speed bumps.

The week that was (week 16)

2010-07-13T21:15:00.000+12:00

An up and down week last week in terms of motivation, tiredness and ability to train, but in the end I feel like I put in a big effort and I feel pretty good this week. The week consisted of:

Swim: 5 sessions totalling 6.9km in 3.5 hours (by far my biggest weekly swim total)
Bike: 4 sessions totalling 157.8km in just over 6 hours
Run: 3 sessions totalling 31km in 3:10 (including an 83km ride with Coach Geoff on Sunday at a relatively high perceived effort.)
Total 12 sessions, 195.7km and 12.7 hours.

Biggest probelm of the week was lack of sleep catching up on me after some late nights watching the All Whites play in the world cup in the 10 days prior. I also started to find that I was hungary a lot and was snacking quite a bit, but despite this my weight has continued to drop slowly at a rate of about 0.5kg per week for the last four weeks or so.

An assault on my senses

2010-07-12T23:20:00.002+12:00

For some reason while out on my run tonight I found myself to be hypersensitised, with every sight, smell, touch and sound amplified several times over. I am not sure if this is because of the combination of extreme cold and dark night (no moon) or because for the first time as I left for my run I uttered to Carleen the words I have been anticipating but dreading: "I can't really be bothered training tonight". Perhaps it was because my mind was able to wander as I was on a familiar route and I had nothing technical to concentrate on during the run. Regardless, I got into a rhythm really quickly and I was very soon bombarded with sensory stimuli.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of smoke that drifted aimlessly along the Leith Valley, emanating as it did from every chimney I passed. Some smelled like a comfortable campfire ablaze in a circle of tents while others had the tar-like stench of coal or the toxic fumes of smoldering chemicals. These aromas swirled around my head, filling my lungs with thick soup of nastiness. As I ambled down the valley I also noticed the sepia-toned glint of the frost on the footpath as it glimmered in the amber glow of the street lamps. My face, ears and neck were frozen to the point of hurting by the friged air that pressed down on me and the barley audible, yet constant, crunch of frost under foot reminded me of one of the reasons I was so reluctant to train tonight.

As I left the valley and passed the Woodhaugh Gardens the sounds of the city started to invade my personal space. I could hear the raucous, but rhythmic chants of a student party off to the left as they celebrated the end of the first day of semester. Then out of the darkness and to my great surprise I heard the faint cry of a native owl - a Morpork - over my right shoulder; only the second time I have ever heard one in Dunedin, the first time ironically walking home after a raucous student party.

Nearing George Street I was now fully immersed in the soft low rumble of the city. Cars would roll past, lights blazing and tyres humming on the road and crunching on the grit. Groups of students would walk past in the opposite direction, their voices seeming to penetrate deep inside me. Out through the campus and past the new stadium construction site the sights, sounds and smells of the city were a veritable cacophony. Then, as I neared the harbour, it was all replaced by the roar of a very gentle, but bitterly cold, polar breeze as it hit my face. Now my face ached and burned and I could concentrate on little else.

Two kilometres later, out of the wind in the lee of the hill, I began to notice several running partners join me. Some were ghostly grey others were reassuringly sold dark shapes. They would be right beside me as I passed under the street lamps, but would stretch out in front of me as I moved on, another joining me just as I reached the next light. I have never noticed my shadows before while running, but tonight they were great company.

As I turned to to head back up the harbour on the waterfront track the roar of the breeze on my face and in my ears was replaced with the hypnotic "clop-rasp-clop-rasp-clop rasp" of my feet pounding the pavement and my arms rubbing on the side of my nylon jacket. This beat was only broken by a single shrill from an Oystercatcher on the shore and the "phert - phert - phert" of my latest contribution to greenhouse gases as it reverberated in time with my stride. The harbour was dark but my eyes were drawn to the asynchronous blinking of the green and red channel markers and the occasional white seabird flying into the outer reaches of the glow of the street lamps.

Back at Logan Park again and the oppressive weight of the cold hit me; my face burning and arms and shoulders starting to feel like lead. Off in the distance I could hear a large group of very loud students, then from the corner of my eye I saw something scuttle across the grass beside me. I jump back in surprise and heard claws scurry up the bark of a tree and saw a very large possum scoot up the trunk faster than I could run away. As I neared the noisy students I saw that the large group was actually only seven or eight very drunk, and far too under-dressed, women. Their antics were unbearably loud and, when one of them tried to mock me by running behind me in her high heels, the sound of her shoes pierced my ear drums. Their laughter surrounded me like we were all locked in a small cupboard and I moved on as fast as I could.

By the time I start heading back up the Leith Valley with a hint of stale beer in the air, my right hip is getting very tired and my "clop-rasp" was replaced with a "clop-rasp-skid/clop-rasp-clop-rasp-skid/clop-rasp" as my right leg drags ever so slightly across the grit on the footpath. I was occasionally rejoined by my running partners as I pass under the widely spaced street lamps and the Waters of the Leith babbled alongside me as the river meandered down the valley.

Back at the truck and done for the night, I had covered 14.9km in 1:27 without even thinking about it. I am refreshed by the run but completely drained by the over-stimulation.

Looking back at my achievements - the numbers

2010-07-08T22:21:00.000+12:00

Since I started training seriously in 2008 I have completed more than 30 events of 5km or longer. Below is a list of the events that I have completed as an individual (there are some other team events not covered here). When I look at the sheer number of these, and the improvement, I can't believe that the I am the same guy who at high school was almost always last in the cross country runs and who thought Brendon Downie (one of NZ's most well-known triathletes and who was the same year as me at high school) was mad:

(Listed as Event date (distances) time.)
Half mararthons:
1 Moro (Dunedin) 14/09/2008 2:08:28
2 Cromwell 25/10/2008 1:58:54
3 Southland 9/11/2008 2:01:52
4 Southern Lakes 11/04/2009 1:51:32
5 Christchurch 31/05/2009 1:55:32
6 Balclutha 28/06/2009 1:58:51
7 Woodbourne 16/08/2009 2:00:30
8 Moro (Dunedin) 13/09/2009 2:00:13
9 Hill Free (Outram) 4/10/2009 1:52:50
10 Cromwell 25/10/2009 21.1 1:50 1:49:24
11 Lake Wanaka Half (ironman) (team) 16/01/2010 21.1 1:48 2:04:36
12 Southern Lakes 27/03/2010 21.1 1:45 1:46:40 (PB)
13 Chistchurch 7/06/2010 21.1 1:45 1:47:39

Full Marathon
Southland (National Champs) 22/11/2009 4:21:13

5km
1 Hill City Fun Run Logan Park Mar-09 25:12
2 Hill City Fun Run Logan Park Mar-09 25:30
3 Corporate Tri Mac Bay Mar-09 24:29
4 Hill City Fun Run Logan Park Mar-09 25:01
5 Tri Club Tri Vauxhall Mar-09 24:02
6 Hill City Fun Run Logan Park Mar-09 24:31
7 Hill City Fun Run Chingford 9/03/2010 25:03
8 Hill City Fun Run Bayfield 16/03/2010 25:01
9 Hill City Fun Run Logan Park 23/03/2010 23:29 (PB)

Duathlon
1 Winter Series Race 1 Taieri 2/08/2009 (2.5k, 9.6k, 2.5k) 0:46:19 (Winner)
2 Winter Series Race 4 Taieri 30/08/2009 (5k, 38.5k, 10k) 2:55:59 (last)
3 Rail Trail 27 & 28/02/2010 (150km in 7 legs over 2 days) 8:29:44
4 Winter Series Race 1 Taieri 23/05/2010 (5k, 19.26k, 5k) 1:23:15
5 Winter Series Race 2 Taieri 27/06/2010 (5k, 19.26k, 5k) 1:22:10

Triathlon
1 Lake Dunstan (Cromwell) 2/01/2010 (500m, 22km, 5.8km) 01:31:19
2 Lake Hayes Easter (Lake Hayes) 2/04/2010 (750m, 22km, 5km) 01:29:49

Coach Geoff Knows Best

2010-07-07T21:40:00.001+12:00

I have just finished some interval training and I am absolutely stuffed. I just want to go to bed and sleep for a couple of days. Its not the intervals that have taken it out of me nor is it the volume of training (either the number of sessions or amount of time I have spent training). It is the fact that I have not been following Coach Geoff's instructions on the intensity of my training. In particualr I am pushing far too hard on the bike. For example's Sunday's ride was supposed to be 'easy' intensity but I pushed to more like half ironman pace for the whole three hours and then yesterday I got a great tail wind on an 'Ironman' (IM) pace progression so I decided that it was ok to do 40-45km/h (I maxed out at almost 47km/hr) all the way back from Broad Bay.

There is a reason that Geoff prescribes very detailled and specific intensity, duration and schedule for my training and I know I need to be doing this, but on the bike in particualr, I jus can't help myself. This week Geoff has added an extra swim session so that I have had four days in a row of swimming (for the first time ever) and it has been quite draining (if you'll excuse the water pun :-)), but I know that I'd have coped much better if I had listened to Geoff about the intensity of ALL of my workouts.

Geoff definitely knows best and from now on I am going to follow him to the absolute letter.

Negotiating the speed bumps

2010-07-06T22:50:00.000+12:00

The last 2 weeks or so have seen me hit a few speed bumps (e.g. my daughter getting ill a couple of times, my own 24 hour stomach bug last week and then again last night and the emergence of some self doubt), but I think I have negotiated them now. I have trained strongly since Sunday with an excellent long ride on my own on Sunday, a couple of good sessions in the pool, another good controlled ride today and (despite having to have a couple of unscheduled toilet stops to deal with an upset stomach) a good controlled 90 minute run last night.

My head is also in a better place thanks to positive comments from people in response to my self doubt posting last week. The first of these was from Jason Wadsworth who always seems to come up with fantastic feedback just when I need it. Last week he emailled me within hours of my post and said:

"Time for reflection mate. Did you have those voice's when you ran your first half [marathon]. If you had listened to them you may have stopped but your character is too strong to listen to them. Reflect back on how far you have come and take from that the strength you need to move forward and achieve your goals. You can do anything. ... Often we spend so much time focusing on our goals that we think it can never be achieved. When we review how far we have come it can often reminds us that yes the road is difficult ahead but we have achieved goals in the past, we can achieve in the future if we want to."

Very wise advice and something that I have taken on board and will be putting into practice more often. I have been recording my sporting achievements over the last two years and I periodically look at the results (and by that I usually just mean the numbers), but I rarely reflect on exactly what I have achieved. I plan to do this in a blog post later this week. Thanks Jas! You have been a huge help to me already, I am so glad that I looked you up on facebook when I did. I used to look up to you as my First XV rugby captain at school and you are still coming through with inspiration and leadership even if (and possibly even because) you are so humble with it.

Others have provided positive reinforcement face to face. For example Geoff (Coach) in his usual way - "Shit yeah, you can do this and do this well." - it never ceases to amaze me how supremely confident he is in my ability to pull this off. Victoria (Race Director) from Challenge Wanaka at a promotional road show last Thursday evening also said that she had every confidence that I could do this. I have also drawn further comfort from the training diary of Tracey Richardson that I found online, as her entries are littered with pangs of anxiety and doubt and she got through Ironman NZ and then conquered the Hawaii Ironman about 8 months later. Then, today I received a comment on my blog from Rachel Harris (see comment on self doubt post) that was a great boost and reading her account of her Challenge Wanaka 2009 effort has spurred me on too (I love these random comments from people, as they make not only the journey more worthwhile, but they also drive me to write more in this blog).

Thanks to everyone for helping me through these speed bumps. I am sure there will be more bumps more obstacles to negotiate but now I am reassured that there will be plenty of people there to help me over, through and around them.

The weeks that were (Weeks 14 & 15)

2010-07-06T21:57:00.001+12:00

This is a belated and pretty boring update for the last two weeks. I have been delaing with a few minor helath issues and juggling a bit of life with trainibng over the last 10 days or so, so I haven't been able to keep up to date with blog posts.

Week 14 (week ended Sunday 27 June 2010):
run distance 37.8 km (including two 5km legs of a duathlon) in 3hours 34 minutes.
bike distance 108.9km (including 19.25km leg of a duathlon) in 3:35.
swim distance 4.5km in 2:50.
total distance 151.2km in 9:59.

Week 15 (week ended Sunday 4 July 2010):
This week was disrupted by a 24 hour stomach bug that meant I missed two sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
run distance 22.5km in 2:20.
bike distance 129.1km (including a 83.75km in 3:04) in 5:00.
swim distance 4.1km in 2:36.
total distance 155.7km in 9:56.

The first seeds of self-doubt

2010-06-30T22:03:00.001+12:00

A couple of days ago I experienced my first doubts about my ability to pull this off. I know I want to do this. I know I have to do this. I know I NEED to do this. But there is this little voice off in the distance just chipping away saying: "Who do you think you are? You're no athlete. You must be kidding yourself if you think you can do this."

It doesn't help that I have been feeling like crap the last few days. I am certain its just a bug that has gone round the family (I am the last to have had it), but that little voice has been saying: "Maybe your training too hard. Maybe your body is trying to tell you that you can't do this."

Having now read both Dean Karnazes book (Ultramarathon Man) and Tracey Richardson's inspiring book about her journey to Ironman NZ and the Hawaii Ironman (Going the Distance, see video) I know that these are normal thoughts. Both talk about the voices of doubt and both deal with them. I know I can deal with them too, as I have encountered them before: when learning to walk again; when trying to complete my PhD; when doing the Christchurch Half Marathon earlier in the month; and even when starting to write this blog. I just hope the voices don't get too loud too soon, it's still more than six months to race day.

Tomorrow night I am off to a presentation by the Challenge Wanaka team and I am sure that this will send those voices packing (for the meantime at least). Once again inspired by Tracey Richardson and Dean karnazes, I am also working on an idea that will help me give back through the Challenge and through this blog. This has started to develop some real energy inside of me and is filling me with lots of positive thoughts (more on that in the coming months, I hope).

Back in the land of the living (or am I?)

2010-06-28T08:30:00.004+12:00

This week's training has bounced back. The hamstring strain cleared up and running was good again, so much so that today I ran my second and fifth fastest 5km (23:32 and 24:01, respectively) in the first and second legs of the second race in the Dunedin Tri Club Winter Duathlon series. I managed to shave 1:06 minutes off my previous time for the course, including around 45 seconds off the bike leg (averaging 35.3km/h).

While my swimming doesn't seem to be taking any great leaps forward in terms of speed, I feel a lot better in the water and I am able to relax more. While it might sound a little counter-intuitive, I am also working harder and I am noticing more power in my arms and shoulders. My kick is still weak, but improving.

After last week's crappy week of training I was worried that things were going to head down hill, but this week I felt like I was back in the land of the living. However, an incident in ICU at Austin Hospital in 2001 made me think that I had died and that I would not see Carleen again or meet my son James.

22 August 2001, some time in the evening

The last 24 hours have consisted mostly of sleep, broken by periods of semi-lucid discussions with the nurses and the few visitors that I have been able to have. My Auntie Sandy and her partner Leighann have been in and I am extremely thankful that they are here to support Carleen. Sandy is the youngest on my Dad's side of the family and she has been a great help since we arrived in Melbourne. She lives out on the Morninigton Peninsula about 90 minutes' drive from the hospital, but she has come into town to be with Carleen. Carleen's cousin Jill and her partner Rhys have also been in to see me and support Carleen and it's great that Carleen has someone from her family here too. We've also got friends from Dunedin in Melbourne so, even though we have only been in Melbourne for six months, I am bouyed by the fact that there is a small support network here for Carleen.

I really can't remember much of the conversation from today, but the nurses have just said to me that it is great to have someone that is so positive in the ICU. "The conversation's not usually so entertaining in this place", one of them says. I vaguely recall pulling out some one liners at various points of the day and making the nurses laugh.

The pain is with me all the time, but it is bearable. They must have me doped up to the eyeballs, because I'm guessing you don't get away with being cut in half by a truck that lightly. I am stuck on my back and can't move at all without assistance and that is starting to become uncomfortable too, plus I have noticed that I am very swollen and getting larger by the hour. By now my hips and torso are bulging to about twice their normal size. Aside from the general pain in my lower abdomen and the swelling, I can't say that I am very aware of exactly what my injuries are. There's no specific pain, not yet anyway.

Carleen has just left for the day and there is a handover period for the nurses so, as there is double the number on duty for the half hour or so on either side of the shifts, its time to change my dressings. The dressings cover about 25-30% of my body and upper legs, stretching from halfway up my ribcage to just above the knee on my righthand side and about half that area on the left. They cover the gravel rash where the skin was scrapped off by the road surface like coarse sand paper would rip the skin off an apple. In parts the wound is a centimetre or so deep and raw flesh is exposed and the entire mass oozes a clear fluid and patches of blood, so by now the dressings are swelling to the point of bursting.

I've been motionless for most of the last 24 hours so I haven't felt too much pain from the gravel rash, but the nurse has just begun to peel back the dressing and in an instant the air rushes in and lights up the flesh like it has been dowsed in petrol and set alight. I am filled with an overwhelming flight or fight reflex (I either want to run away from her very quickly or punch her in self defense), but I can do neither - I am trapped. "Sorry, I know that must have hurt, but we have to do this", she says with a genuinely apologetic and sympathetic look on her face. "We can give you some pain relief so that you don't feel anything at all. It's called Ketamine and it will make you feel a sense of euphoria", the other nurse explains. "Most people find it to be a pleasurable experience, but some people have a slightly different experience that they describe as being like being outside their body." She fills a syringe and draws out a small dose of Ketamine and attaches it to my IV line. "Okay, here we go. You'll feel this working pretty quickly."

Whoosh! My head is in a spin. Where am I? Who is that laying down there? What are those nurses doing to him? What is that white light? Oh shit! I'm dead! Stay away from the light! Oh no, its all consuming! The light is taking over. HELP! HELP! HELP! I am drifting upwards towards the blindingly bright light off in the corner of the room and I can see myself on the bed, being turned one way and then the other by the nurses as they clean and re-dress my wounds. How can I have survived the initial crash only to die from a drug overdose? Its not fair, its not fair! Why can't they hear me? Why aren't they doing anything? Surely they know I am dead?

The light is fading, slowly... slowly and I am falling back to the bed. Then wammo! I am back in reality and the pain is intense. I am in a state of sheer terror. "What just happened? That was bloody awful! I thought I had died." "That's the adverse reaction. I am sorry about that. Some people do have an out of body experience. We didn't think it would be that bad as we only gave you 10% of the full dose", the new shift nurse explained. My heart was racing and I was still extremely frightened. "I don't want that stuff again. I don't care how much pain I am in, just don't give me that again, please." "Okay, I am really sorry about that, I haven't seen a reaction that bad before, especially on such a low dose."

Later a nurse explained that people use Ketamine as a recreational drug. On the street it is also known as 'Special K' or 'Vitamin K'. My advice: DON'T DO IT! It's also used to tranquilise horses for goodness sake. It can't be good for you!

Over the next days and weeks, I'd grow to regret my refusal of Ketamine. As daily dressing changes took pain levels to a new high. I didn't think things could get any more intense, but they did. One occasion in particular was beyond what any living being should have to endure. More on that later...

What did we do before Garmin (BG)?

2010-06-24T18:00:00.001+12:00

I finally got my Garmin training computer Garmin Forerunner 310XT. WOW!!! What did we all do for training data before these things came along? My clumsy spreadsheet that recorded total time and distance and my polar heart rate monitor for measuring nothing but elapsed time and heart rate were fine but there are so many more things that I can do with my Garmin. My old system became more sophisticated when I discovered MapMyRun.com, but I gave up using that for anything more than finding the total distance I ran because the whole thing took too much time.

For example, for today's interval training (see data below) before setting out I set up the interval training at the pace and number of reps I wanted to do, I also selected the 90 second rest interval. I also set up a warm up and cool down and then as I started I simply pushed the start button and away I went. The screen told me I was in warm up until I pused the lap button and then just prior to the first interval I selected the Virtual Partner (VP) screen and then pushed lap. As I set off my VP and I were plotted on the screen and a live feed told me how far ahead or behind I was. Then when I was 10 metres from finishing my 1km interval I got a countdown beep and then a vibration when I crossed the 1km mark. The 90 second rest interval counted down automatically giving me a 10 second countdown and then I started all over again. Once at home I simply turned the Garmin on and the data was uploaded to Garmin Connect (see below) via a radio signal: no plugging in, no pushing of any buttons; map plotted; heart rate, elevation and pace plotted; splits recorded; virtual fly through loaded; all done! Next week, I will have my bike cadence also plotted.

This is all done from a unit just a little larger than a normal wrist watch and costing around $NZ500. This is made even more astounding because GPS wasn't even operational until December 1993 (after 20 years just getting the satelites up) and, according to one of my training partners, James (an astrophysicist), the first ground units were so large they had to have a seat for the operator!

The week that was (Week 13)

2010-06-23T19:44:00.000+12:00

Last week was a week to forget really. Its been my worst week in terms of keeping to my program. The rides were disrupted by gear failure (cracked frame leading to the new bike and then a shifter coming loose on Sunday) and my runs were disrupted by a hamstring strain. Both are sorted now (hopefully) and I am back into it again.

In th end I managed 8.8 hours of training (down about 2-3 hours on where I should have been), including: 2 runs totalling 23.3km and 2:10; 3 rides at 88.6km and 5:08, and; 4 swims at 4.65km and 2:50.

I also added some strength and balance/stability exercises, which have added a new dimension and I have started to notice a difference already.

Over the last 13 weeks I have covered approximately 1,650km (330km by foot, 1,284km on the bike and 35km in the pool) in 110 hours (33 hours, 53 hours and 23 hours, respectively). That's about the same as driving from Dunedin to Whangarei, including swimming Cook Straight (right into Wellington Harbour).

Go the All Whites!!!

2010-06-20T22:39:00.002+12:00

Off to bed now, but up again at 2am to watch the All Whites pull off the upset of all time in the World Cup.

Go the All Whites!!!

The luckiest man alive

2010-06-20T22:38:00.000+12:00

This week of training has been one to forget (hamstring issue, bike problems and cold weather), but last night I took my son James to his first All Black Test Match (the last test match at Carisbrook) and it suddenly dawned on me that I had a lot to be appreciative of.

The day started brilliantly fine and warm, one of those days that are so rare in Dunedin in June that you make sure that you get out and enjoy every second of warmth. James had a rugby game at 10am against the top of the table team and (as assistant coach) I was a bit nervous as we had heard that they had a couple of 'giants' and that they were a bit rough. I needn't have been nervous, they were a good side and had a couple of tall boys, but they weren't the ones doing all the attacking. It was an excellent game of rugby. Our boys played out of their skins and James played his best game yet. He is growing in confidence slowly and I am loving seeing every little bit of progress. Despite loosing 70-35, I was so proud of the boys that a little tear welled up in my eye at full time.

The afternoon was a lunch with old friends that I hadn't seen for ages and we dined and talked the afternoon away with the french doors open and a tui eating off a bird feeder little more than 1.5 metres away from the end of the table. Emma played with the other children and James sat quietly reading one of his new books. It was a perfect afternoon; relaxed, warm and stimulating.

We headed to the test match early, only to be confronted by an accident within a block of the ground. A taxi van was parked across the road and as the crowd parted we saw a pair of legs prone underneath the rare of the van. The poor guy had clearly been run over and I could fully empathise with him. We could hear the sirens in the distance so we moved James and his cousin (Cameron) on. Michael and Deb (Carleen's sister) both asked me if it had brought back memories or emotions from my own accident, but strangely it didn't stir anything inside.

Once inside the ground you could feel the excitement building. The crowd was bubbling with anticipation. James was much more alert than any other game we had been to at Carisbrook. We discussed various aspects of what was going on around us and the hour between when we arrived and kick off just melted away. We both proudly belted out the national anthem (tears streaming down my cheek as always with the national anthem). The ABs performed their new haka to a rousing applause that the game was underway.

The first half of the game was a bit of an arm wrestle and there were lots of mistakes, but I didn't care! I was their with my little boy and we were loving every moment. He asked lots of questions and sang at the top of his voice when all of the celebration songs came on when either team scored. It was awesome. Just after half time James got a bit tired and decided to sit on my knee and cuddle down under a blanket. He still watched the game and continued to talk to me about what was going on. When the game sparked to life with wave after wave of attack by the All Blacks, James jumped up and then when the Mexican wave started speeding round he joined in like he was an old pro at this kind of event.

The game finished and James was standing on his seat applauding. He leaned over and said, "Daddy, the All Blacks are my new favourite team. I haven't seen a team score more than 40 points before." The post match celebrations continued with the arrival and departure of a helicopter and a fire works display. "That was awesome Daddy, I wish Emma was here."

At this point I realised I was the luckiest man alive. So luck to be alive at all. So lucky to have the opportunity to be with my son at this moment special community celebration. So lucky to be bonding with the son that I may have never been around to meet with. I had a warm glow inside that I had never experienced before and it felt great.

Broken

2010-06-17T23:20:00.001+12:00

On Saturday I strained my left hamstring while refereeing my son's under 8 rugby match. Those 7 year old's are bloody hard to keep up with and my legs couldn't handle zig-zagging all over the paddock like a headless chicken. (It was a great game though, even though the boys lost.)

Despite the twinge to the hammy, Monday's long run was ok. Things tightened up after 45 minutes but it didn't slow me down too much. Swimming was fine too as was riding, but this morning when doing my 1km intervals things took a turn to for the worse. Warm-up was fine as were the stride outs, but by the end of the first kilometre my leg was really tightening up. I started out on the second kilometre, but by about 400m the pain was beginning to increase and by 700m I decided that the warning signs were too great to ignore and before I became completely broken I stopped running.

I might be a little bit broken now, but on 21 August I was almost completely broken. After being in theatre and under anaesthetic for several hours (see Fade to Black), still semi-conscious I started to hear voices around me. I was in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Austin Hospital after having been put back together.

21 August 2001, some time in the evening

My eyes are closed, but I drift in and out of consciousness hearing soft female voices. I know one of them is Carleen and I want to call out to her and reach for her hand, but I am not able to open my eyes and I am aware that something is obstructing my throat. This seems to go on forever, but I think the reality is more likely to be a couple of minutes. My eyes blink. The light is bright and I can't really focus. I see some blurry figures and my vision comes back and I can see Carleen and I can feel her touch.

"Carleen, oh Carleen", I say but no words come out and I begin to choke. Why is there something down my throat? "Get it out! Get it out! I'm choking!", but again no words. It dawns on me that I have a ventilation tube down my throat (intubation). I feel like I am choking to death. "Get it out! Get it out!" The nurses come over and reassure me. They can obviously see the sheer terror in my eyes. "Sorry, its going to have to stay in a while longer." I turn my head to Carleen and she strokes my hand, tears are streaming down her cheek.

"You should try and relax," says one of the nurses in a very reassuring voice, "just try to relax." Relax!?! How the hell can I relax? There is a rigid plastic tube the size of a radiator hose down my throat! "Just breath slowly, and try to relax. It can come out soon, but not right now." Carleen squeezes my hand tight and we both start to cry. She wipes my brow and starts to reassure me.

A million thoughts race through my head. Am I going to be able to walk? How on earth is Carleen going to cope? Oh, my God, I hope the baby is going to be ok? Will I ever get of this place? Why can't I breath for myself? Does this tube mean that I am near the end?

I am fading in and out of consciousness. I have no sense of time and things are not very lucid. Carleen tells me that she had gone for the night when the nurse began to remove the tube. Ever so slowly she drew it out. Centimetre after centremetre rasp at my throat. I gag. Then, a gasp of air and I breath on my own.

The next few hours are a real blur and I can't recall much at all. I think that I am asleep for most of it. However, I remember being really thirsty and not being allowed anything to drink and the nurses wiping my lips with a wet cottonbud/cutip and thinking how divine it felt, yet how torturous it was when I wasn't able to drink. Eventually I am allowed to chew on some crushed ice, it is bliss.

My memory is vague for the much of the rest of my stay in the ICU and time is really jumbled, except an incident involving ketamine, but that will have to wait for another post.

Nissan Ute, Subaru Forester or Ferrari?

2010-06-16T21:53:00.002+12:00

At the weekend I discovered that a couple of small cracks had appeared in my bike frame just above the front forks. At first, I thought that it was just the paint, but I thought that I had better get it checked out so I took it back in to the guys at the Cycle Surgery. The prognosis - I think the technical phrase they used was "Your bike is toast!". Just to be sure they stripped it down and checked the inside of the frame and it turns out that the crack was indeed structural and amounted to a 2-2.5cm crack. Time for a new one - well, a new frame at least.

Goughy, Geoff and Aaron had already hatched a plan to upgrade me before I went in with the dead frame so they were already on to it. "Ah, we were just discussing about us upgrading you to a new frame", Goughy said before I had even had a chance to tell them about the cracks I had discovered. It was a bit 'used car sales' ("Have we got a deal for you!"), but I had to agree with them and I had been thinking about it myself over the last couple of weeks anyway.

So by lunchtime Tuesday they had set me up a full carbon CR1 Comp frame with a new aero base bar and my existing aero bars with bar-end shifters and brakes. They put my Shimano 105 gear on it and upgraded the derailleur to Ultegra as well as a couple of other bits and pieces. (Sorry that bit was for the bike guys amongst you, the rest of you can ignore it if you like.)

The Cycle Surgery boys gave me all the low down on the benefits of full carbon and why the CR1 was right for me as opposed to something else. They had run a little sweepstake amongst themselves to see how much lighter the new set up would be than my old bike (it turned out to be about 1.5kg or about 15% lighter). To be honest, I'd always thought that all the talk about the benefits of full carbon was just that - all talk. How could carbon fibre possibly make the ride any more comfortable? How is one bike more responsive than the next? Could 1.5kg really make any difference to my speed when I myself weigh 105kg?

How wrong I was!

I headed out today for my first test ride totally skeptical and ready to pick up any little flaw in the hype. WOW, it really does make a difference and not just a small difference, the difference was enormous. I liken the difference in ride comfort as being about the same as the difference between my dilapidated 1991 Nissan Datsun Ute (slow, rough riding, noisy and no power steering) and our 2007 Subaru Forester AWD (good pick up, smooth on the road, relatively quiet and sticks the road like glue). The carbon frame is smooth and responsive and very comfortable in comparison to my old alloy frame, but could it really be any quicker?

To be fair, I am not sure that I can give an accurate assessment on how much faster it might have been based on just one ride to Portobello and back. Yes I was faster (about 2-3km/h faster in fact), but was that just because I was putting in a harder effort or maybe the tail wind was stronger on the way out than the head wind coming back? I am sure that it was a combination of effort, wind and bike, but I am convinced that bike was a significant part of it. The rises in elevation were definitely faster and it was definitely easier to climb the small hills in a much smaller rear cog. I decided that the real test would be a hill so I decided to include a hill at the end of my ride and sure enough this is where it really made a huge difference. I don't think that I was that much faster than normal, but the effort required was definitely far less (I reckon about 10-15% less) than I am use to.

Now I am faced with several dilemmas. Can I afford to upgrade to the carbon frame or is it a case of can I afford not to? The extra comfort will definitely make the bike leg of Challenge Wanaka on the rough Central Otago roads much more bearable. Do I accept that the Subaru Forester (CR1 Comp/Full carbon road bike) is what I need to do the job (comfortable, reliable and faster than my old ute) or do I test drive the Ferrari that is made for the job (a full carbon time trial/triathlon bike)? The latter might compromise a little on comfort and versatility but it should be significantly faster. A lot is going to depend on whether anyone is willing to let me test drive a Ferrari and whether there is a significant difference in price between the Forester and the Ferrari.

I think I feel a Ferrari test drive coming up soon, but what I really need is to find a sponsor to help me into one permanently.

YEEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!!!

2010-06-16T01:23:00.001+12:00

ALL WHITES 1 SLOVAKIA 1.

One of the proudest moments in NZ sporting history!!!!!!

And I watched it live!!!!!!!!

YES, YES, YES!!!!!!

What next?

2010-06-15T23:28:00.000+12:00

Over the past couple of weeks my head has been filled with ideas on what to write next. There are sooooo many things racing around in my head, I just don't know where to start, or indeed where to end, some of the ideas that I have.

For instance, I am finding that there are many many things that I want to discuss about the growing influence of my coach (Geoff Williamson) and how positive I am about what he is doing for me. Aside from the challenging, interesting and varied program that he is developing for me, there is the psychological component - he has a great knack of instilling confidence in me and of making me expect more of my own ability.

This latter point is also something that is coming through from comments of people that have emailed me and that I have chatted with me. I have discussed this in earlier posts, but it something that I want to explore more; I want to be able to include their 'voice' in this blog, as they are all part of this story.

I also want to reflect on my reading of Dean Karnazes Ultramarathon Man, the first book I have read cover to cover in a very long time and one that I know will have a considerable influence on me, but not necessarily in a way that it might for most that read it.

One of the things that 'Karno' has taught me is that my endeavour doesn't have to be completely selfish and there are ways that I can make a difference for others. 'Giving back' is something that has been nagging me for many years, not just since I started training for Challenge Wanaka. Now I have the opportunity to give back, I am faced with the dilemma of who to give back to and how exactly to do it.

Then there is my deep desire to continue the story of my accident, starting with waking up in ICU as a very frightened and vulnerable individual. This is a difficult part of the story to tell not only because of the intense emotions that I experienced and find hard to describe, but because my memory is a jumble of drug-induced blur and some very vivid and very scary memories.

I am also deeply aware that this story is not complete without a reflection on the people that are nearest and dearest to me (Carleen, James and Emma and my parents). They are always at the forefront of my mind in everything that I do and I want to weave this into this story.

These are all things that I will be exploring over the next few months or so. Where they appear in the story may not always make sense, but they all have a meaning to me and they are all part of the overall story. I hope that I can do them justice and that I can find the time to get it all down.

For now... GO THE ALL WHITES! Here's hoping for our first win at on the World Cup stage.

The week that was (Week 12)

2010-06-13T22:35:00.041+12:00

This week started with a couple of days of feeling very sore indeed (see Anatomy of a Race 3). In fact, on Monday I was so sore after the Christchurch Half Marathon, I couldn't make it to the pool to do my recovery session. Tuesday was a little bit better after a good session in the pool and a 6.6 km run in the evening that finally allowed my legs to loosen up.

I also had a couple fo excellent rides during the week, especially on Friday when I did a half ironman (HIM) pace ride to Portobello. The harbour was like a mill pond and the only ripples were created by the long wake of a kayak and a rowing skiff and the occasional wing tip of a shag (cormorant) skimming the surface like a stone thrown by a child. It was one of those awe-inspiring scenes that makes you appreciate the beauty of this humble city - a scene that most locals do not value nearly enough. In the end I effortlessly averaged 31km/h over almost 16km and was crusing at 32-34 for most of that distance. I was well-pleased!

The week included: two runs (11.6km in 1:10), including hill repeats for one session; four rides (148km in 5:40), and; three swim sessions (3.95km in 2:15). For what was essentially a recovery week, I still managed a total of about 9 hours 18 minutes of training.

This week also saw Blogger introduce some new design tools and so I have updated the look of my blog. Let me know what you think about the new look.

Anatomy of a Race - Part 3 (The Race)

2010-06-10T23:27:00.001+12:00

Feeling Good

As we headed off the crowd surged to fill the gaps just prior to the start and then paused in a wave back through the competitors as we all stopped for the actual start. I remembered this from last year and was alert to any potential collision with runners in front of me.

Safely over the start line some 34 seconds after the start, I started the Garmin GPS that I had borrowed while I await the arrival of my new one and headed off on my 13th half marathon. Unlike last year the flow of runners was pretty good and there weren't too many slow runners or walkers to negotiate. I had feared a start like last year, where there were dozens (if not hundreds) of people to make my way around in the first one or two kilometres. This had cost me at least a minute or two and that, combined with my watch failing before the 5k mark, had meant a race that was well below par. Last year's race was definitely in my head for that first kilometre, but I unlike last year, I set a cracking pace (for me that is) of 4:47. That was about 10 seconds ahead of target pace to complete my first sub-1 hour 45 half.

I feel into a nice rhythm really quickly and I wasn't distracted by any of the runners around me. I was running my own race, not trying to keep up with anyone nor too perturbed by people passing me. My legs were feeling fresh and my breathing was well under control. I peeled off a 4:43 kilometre, then 4:45, 4:48 and 4:46 so that by the time I got to the 5km mark and the first drinks station I was still well on target for a 1:45:00 finish.

I slowed for a drink at the 5k station, but didn't manage to get much down. Drinking out of a half filled 200ml plastic cup while you are running is a skill I am yet to master. You feel like a toddler learning to drink from a cup for the first time, gulping down water and gasping for air all at once and spilling 50mls for every 10 you manage to get down. I don't know why they haven't invented a Tommy Tippee for marathon drink stops, surely if you drink like a toddler then a toddler's cup would be most apt.

As I left the drinks station I thought to myself that I couldn't believe how good I was feeling and how smooth the race had been so far. Five kilometres in 23:49 was my 3rd fastest 5k split for a half and it was still well within what I needed to be for a 1:45:00 finish. About two kilometres down the road, though, the lactic acid started to build and my pace began to slow.

Mind Games
At first I didn't really notice my pace slowing too much, but I was getting instant feedback from my Garmin in the form of my live pace on screen all the time and my 1km splits flashing up as I passed each kilometre mark. I had thought that this would be great as I would be able to adjust my pace so that I could achieve my target time. As it turned out the constant feedback just started to do my head in. I looked at the watch every 20 or 30 seconds, sometimes I would be doing 5:15 pace and at other times I was doing 4:30. In response I would either speed up of low down, usually over compensating one way or the other.

This part of the course also had several points where competitors would bunch up and have to negotiate narrower parts of the course, so I became more conscious of, and even concerned about, what others were doing around me. 'Get out of the way', I'd think. 'Why did you just pass me and slow down?' 'I should be able to keep up with that one.'

Just after the bridge at the 8.6km mark one particular fellow competitor really got the better of me. We had just got off the bridge where I had remained on the footpath and I had to merge on to the road into a line of runners coming from behind that were still on the road. I kept my line and pace and merged in without any problem. About 10 metres down the road though a really tall guy passed me and leaned over to a woman running with him and said: "Now that the training run over and the race is about to start, better find somewhere else to run, eh." She nodded and said "Yeah." I was convinced that the comment was aimed at me and it pissed me off no end! I was angry, bloody angry. I had as much right to be there as he did and I thought 'I'll show you, you bastard. I'm going to beat you' and I attempted to stay on his heels. Dumb move! This just threw my rhythm out even more and now it was starting to impact on my legs big time.

By the time I reached the 10km drink station I was had averaged just over 5 minutes per kilometre since the last drink station and I was starting to feel the effects. This time I stopped and grabbed two cups of water and a Lepin energy drink and gulped them down as best I could. Little more than a kilometre on my stomach started to ache and I began to regret taking the Lepin. I'd been using the gels in training and they were playing havoc with my gut so I had stopped using them. I am sure I didn't have enough to effect me at that drink stop and not so quickly, but my headspace was so screwed up that I convinced myself that it was costing me a PB.

Two more kilometres and for the first time ever in a race I was contemplating pulling out and I was asking myself: 'What the hell and I doing here?'. 'This is not good', I thought, 'just get on with it'. So I did, but It wasn't for another kilometre or so that my the mind games stopped and I just concentrated on finishing.

I had slowed again after the second drink stop, averaging about 5:13 pace. So, by the 15km split, I was just behind 1:45:00 and a new game started. Do I speed up and try to claw back to target pace or do slow down so that I can finish? I think I ended up doing about 500 metres of each in every until the 17.5 km mark, when things changed.

Exhaution and Fatigue
Bang! It hit me quickly and it hit me hard. I felt a surge of exhaution start at the top of my head and make its way all the way to the tip of my toes. My head started to spin and my vision was blurred. I had no choice but to slow down, A LOT!

I think this is what they call the wall, but it doesn't usually happen in a race this short. It usually happens when you reach about the three hour mark or perhaps the 35km mark of a marathon. This shouldn't have been happening to me.

I was now in the 5:20s and 5:30s and I could do nothing about it. It was a matter of just making it to the end now, no chance of a sub 1:45:00 and no chance of a PB. Nothing moved properly and I was down to little more than a fast shuffle.

At the 19.5km mark there was a band and I thought to myself as the their tent came into view" 'That oughta lift the spirits'. But, when I got there they were playing a very slow depressing march and, along with the grey day and persistent rain, I felt like I was running across a swamp on the Russian Front not on a sealed path in Hagley Park. Despite this I knew the finish was close and I tried picking up the pace a little, but to little effect.

The Finish
I rounded the corner with about 500 metres to go and the finish line loomed large. I knew this was too far out for a sprint finish, but a big guy who looked a bit older than me went past and I recalled a passage from Dean Kanazes book about a close finih in one of his races, so I thought 'What the hell, I'll take him on!'.

I passed him and he picked up the pass, he went passed me and then we went shoulder to shoulder. I dug deep and powered away, but not far. I could hear his footsteps pounding the wet road and with 100 metres to go he ran past me again. This time I had nothing left and I was starting to feel like I would throw up before reaching the finish. So I slowed to a more managable pace and a flood of about 10 people passed me, but I had nothing left and I didn't care anymore, I just wanted to finish.

In the end it was my second fastest time: 1:47:39, just 59 seconds slower than the Southern Lakes Half in March (which actually drops 200 metres from start to finish). I had also finished in the top 34.5% of all finishes, up from 53% last year, and I had taken more than 7 minutes off last years Christchurch time.

So, while I felt that it was one of my worst races ever, I had actually done pretty well and, if the next few days were anything to go by I had run pretty hard. I spent the next two days walking down stairs sideways and reversing on to the toilet was an almost impossible task. Someone once told me that, you know when you've run your hardest when you can't get on and off the toilet the next day, so I must have done something right.

Anatomy of a Race - Part 2 (Pre-race nerves)

2010-06-08T22:12:00.000+12:00

Pre-race
One of the reasons that I arrived at the start line so early was that I was keen to find a corner shop to buy a bottle of water for pre-race hydration and a bottle of Poweraid or Mizone for post-race rehydration. I knew there was one very close by but it was closed that threw me a bit. Where do I look next? I searched the vendors that were setting up at the start line, but there was only coffee of fizzy drink and I wasn't keen on either of those. I had another quick look round, but there was nothing in sight, so I decided to put my coat in my bag and put in the secure storage area.

I could tell the nerves were starting to build, because I wasted half an hour doing that and I still really felt uncomfortable that I wasn't going to be hydrated enough. The city shops were a block away so I decided to head that way for my pre-stretch warm up and I found a liquor store that had water and Poweraid. What a relief! I downed the 600 ml bottle of water in about 3 minutes and my gut started to feel a bit sore. I think this was a combination of the very cold water and the building nervousness. I now also had a bottle of Poweraid to deal with and my bag was already stashed away in the secure storage - more distraction and cause for nervousness. I sorted that out and then headed out into the cold wet morning to continue my warm up and stretch.

My 20 minute warm-up went well and I managed to settle the nerves a bit and I felt fresh and ready to go. The starter called for everyone to gather in the starting area with 15 minutes to go and the commentators started to talk it up. All of a sudden a theme from one of the Rocky movies came blaring out over the PA and I felt my adrenaline rush and my heart rate rise. 'Not good', I thought, ' Deep breathes' and things settled down again.

There were 5000 people on the start line but I may as well have been alone. I was completely focussed on the task ahead. In fact too much so. Being familiar with the course, meant that I was playing out exactly how the first kilometre or so would unfold:

Remember start slowly as there is a pause as the field bunches at the very start.
Head over the start line and start my stop watch.
Right, remember stick to the middle of the road as the camber is too steep at the edges.
Stay focussed a few runners ahead so that you can avoid the slower runners.
Target pace is about 4:50 per km so make sure you don't go too f... "5... 4... 3... 2... 1... GOOO!" 'Oh shit we're off.'

To be continued... (Sorry, I'm a bit tired tonight and need to hit the hay to catch up on some zzz's. More tomorrow...)

Anatomy of a Race - Part 1 (race build-up)

2010-06-07T22:10:00.001+12:00

The Zone:
This is going to sound bizzare coming from a rank amateur athlete with no hope of being anything more than a mid-field muppet, but in the lead up to a race I start to get into a bit of a zone. I have to add at this juncture that its not me that has assigned the label 'athlete', but rather people like the dietian that I consulted and even Coach G - it doesn't quite sit comfortably with me yet, but maybe one day I will consider myself to be an athlete. Anyway, back to the zone...

For me the zone is when everyday activities start to take on significance for the race and training starts to be a little more focussed. For instance, walking along the street last Tuesday evening I started to visualise finishing the race. I focussed on the what my running form should be like and adjusted my posture and cadence as I walked. The same has happened during my 400 metre intervals over the last couple of weeks; concentrating on form and stride over anything else, while visualising various parts of the race.

I have to be careful, because on longer, slower runs I also start to slip into this and my pace starts to creep up when I know I should be moderating it. This also happened when out riding with James on Friday; what should have been a nice easy ride to Portobello and back turned out to be a ride at over 30km/hour.

Pre-race Ritual
I am not sure when this started or why, but for at least the last 12 months, I have taken to performing a little ritual the night before any significant race. This race was no different and I performed every detail as I for the last dozen or so big races.

From Thursday I deliberately refrained from shaving, so that I had three or four days' growth come the eve of the race. On Saturday evening before retiring to bed I set out all my race gear, pinned my race number to my race shirt, put the timing transponder on my laces and the very last thing I did was shave off the stubble so I'd be clean shaven in the morning.

I have no idea how, or indeed if, this helps. Perhaps it just calms the nerves. That being said, you'd think that calmed nerves would help me sleep.

Restless Night
I went to bed this evening with Dean Karnazes' Ultra Marathon Man. Its a great read and I am astrounded about what that man puts his body through and some of the parallels I observed between him and I (e.g. his working class upbringing, his sister's death at about the same time in his life as mine had died in mine and his work situation and the sorts of things that drove him to run). I read for about an hour and I set the alarm on the Garmin that I had borrowed for the race, checked it, checked it again, turned the light off, turned it back on again and checked the alarm again and connected it to the charger (it had 83% left on the battery, but I wasn't taking any chances). When I finally turned the light out at a little after 11pm I tapped the end of the bed with my foot 7 times just in case the alarm didn't go off (Mum told me when I was a kid, that if you tap the end of the bed the same number of times as the time you want to wake up, you'll wake up at that time).

I fell asleep pretty quickly, but woke abruptly at 12:30 having had a very strange dream about soiling the bed. It was very bizarre and very vivid. I could even smell the stench that I had made in my dream (perhaps I farted in my sleep and couldn't stand the smell). I got up to the loo, just in case.

I then woke again at 2:40am, 3:50am (when the heavy rain started) and finally at 6:10am. I just gave up on the idea of any further sleep at that point and turned on the bedside lamp so that I could switch off the alarm that I had so dilligently set (three times!) the night before. I hadn't been nervous about the race at all as it was my 13th half marathon, the second time I'd run this particular race and not a real target, just part of training. There must have been something that wasn't obvious to me that was in fact creating some tension for me and this finally came out in the last night before the race.

I picked up where I had left off with Ultra Marathon Man and discovered that the next chapter was entitled 'Soiling the Lexus'. Perhaps, I'd glanced at this just before turing out the light last night and it had triggered the bizzare bed-soiling dream. More than just a coincidence, I think. I read until 7am, got dressed and headed downstairs in the dark for breakfast. I navigated the stairs well even though it was pitch black and seeing a dim light coming through the kitchen window I confidently strided towards the kitchen door. WHACK! I walked straight into a piece of furniture and I could feel the bruise instantly welling up in my right quad (thigh). I couldn't yell out as at least one of the household (Mikey, my old boss and good friend) was still asleep and the other two (Jody, Mikey's wife and Cooper, their child) were just rising, but I can tell you I said a few very choice words under my breath. I did the very same thing last year and I was pissed off that I hadn't remembered the unfortunate positioning of the furniture.

Breakfast was hastily prepared and eaten (4 weetbix with milk), I had a breif chat with Jody and Cooper and I headed out the door into the cold and very wet morning for the 15 minute walk to the start line. I arrived with 90 minutes before race start and started to prepare myself.

To be continued...

The week that was (Week 11)

2010-06-06T20:48:00.001+12:00

This week was a recovery week timed now in part because I had a 3-day meeting, partly because I ran the Christchurch Half Marathon on Sunday and needed to taper and partly because it was roughly the right week to have a recovery week after three weeks of building.

I started the week with another 400 metre time trial in the pool and, to my surprise, I took 44 seconds off my previous time. That's a staggering 22 seconds a week, but I guess when you start from a base that is so slow, you can't help but make big leaps forward. Unfortunately I missed a short light run and pool session on Monday and Tuesday as my meeting started early and finished late each day.

The week finished with the Christchurch Half Marathon (discussed in my next post) and a pretty pleasing result of 1:47:39. In total the week consisted of four runs (39.9km in 3:53), two swims (2km in 1:15) and two rides (58.6km in 2:20). Thats a total of just on 7:18 of training.

Motivation Part 4 - Body Image

2010-06-03T23:06:00.002+12:00

This is another motivation that I have been thinking about a lot over the last couple of months. Its also stimulated by a story that Katie Menzies (my old coach) emailled to me the other day about an incident she had while out training.

As I have already mentioned in this blog (see A weighty problem), I have been overweight for most of the last 25 years or so. Being run over by a truck also leaves you with the odd scar and deformity too. In fact, my longest scar is about 90 cm long, stretching about 70 percent of the way around my body. These photos show the scar just after the surgery that was designed to correct some of the deformation caused by the truck tyres, but as you can see from the photo on the right I am still assymetrical .

All this takes a bit of a toll on your self image and, while I have never been ashamed of my body or been one to hide it away, over the last 3 or 4 years I have not felt particularly proud of my body. As a result little things that I used to laugh off or include in self-depracating quips have increasingly begun to chip away at my self esteem.

I have found that comments about my weight that have come at sports events have had a particular impact. For example, a comment about my size from my boss in front of a large number of my colleagues when we were diving into a dam after the first day of the Rail Trail two years ago really made me feel bad about myself. The work colleagues (including some students) thought the comment was hillarious and laughed for some time. I, however, did not find it funny at all. There was also the time that a marshal at a triathlon in Gore asked me to step out of the transition zone when I was waiting for Michael to get off the bike. He then asked me to take off my race number as "someone might mistake me for a competitor". This made me question what I was even doing at the race, but also strengthened my resolve to do well and I went on to do a PB for 10km.

Another, on-going annoyance is the nick name 'Big Guy'. I tolerate it from those that I consider to be friends, but it really feel that it is a put down when it comes from those that are no more than acquaintances or colleagues. I might be big, but its not who I am!

Anyway, over the last two months my shape has really started to change (even if my weight has not dropped significantly) and I am taking more pride in my body. In fact, for a couple of weeks I had a complete and utter fascination with my calf muscles (especially my left one, as I have large varicose veins on my right leg). They have real definition and look quite atheletic. Every time I passed a mirror when I had shorts on, I would flex them just to make the definition show. Now its my biceps and shoulders. Call me vain if you want to, but it makes me feel good about myself.

I am still misshapen and I still have a belly and moobs (man-boobs), but at least I can suck in my gut and I am starting to be able to flex my moobs. My moobs (Michael calls them my 'sausage tits') are a big source of motivation. I want to get rid of them and I want look atheletic as well as be athletic. The more my shape improves, the more my self-image improves, the more I desire a healthier athletic physique.

The week that was (Week 10)

2010-06-03T21:48:00.017+12:00

This has been my biggest week yet. I completed 13.6 hours of training, including: 5 swim sessions (3 hours 25 mins and 4.9 km); 4 bike sessions (6:51and 165.7km), and; 3 runs (2:59 and at least 25km, including a session of hill repeats). All this dispite the fact that this was one of the wettest weeks on record. The week also included a mini block of two days of harder effort including hill repeats on the bike and running on the same day and two swim sessions and a half ironman pace effort on the bike on the same day. After the hill repeats, I felt somehow stronger. I even felt like I was walking taller and my posture improved. All in all a good week leading into the Christchurch Half Marathon next weekend.

Fade to black...

2010-05-29T17:35:00.003+12:00

As you will have gathered from the posts from the previous week or so, things have been a little bit emotional for me lately. I had planned to write this particular post (a continuation from The fun begins...) earlier in the week, but my emotions were a bit fraught and I decided to leave it until things settled down for me. I've had a few days extra days to reflect on this particular part of my story and these reflections have been intensified by the fact that Carleen is out of town and this particular part of the story is about our relationship.

I hate being away from Carleen! We have been in a relationship for almost 23 years and we have lived together since we were married in September 1992 (18 years this year) and I find it incredibly difficult when we are apart. I don't know what I would do if I ever lost her. She's only been away for three days and already I am completely exhausted because I loath going to bed without her so I delay my bedtime for several hours just so I can go to sleep relatively quickly.

Part of me thinks that this response to Carleen's absence is related to that fateful day in August 2001 and in particular to the episode that I am about to recount. Sadly, my recollection of the details relating to the exact timing of events and the conversations that I had are a little fuzzy. The emotions, though, are as if they were happening right now...

21 August 2001, about 9:30am

"Carleen, Carleen... I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!", I sob, barely managing to get the words out. Carleen touches me and I momentarily feel safe and secure. What a huge sense of relief. Thank goodness, she is here! Then, BANG, I am overwhelmed with an uncontrollable panic. Suddenly this whole thing is not about me. What have I done!?! What have I done!?! I've shattered our dreams and destroyed Carleen's life. Our baby... what is this going to do to our baby? I might never be a part of his or her life. How can this be?

What if I am paralysed? What if Carleen has to care for me for the rest of my life? How could I have been so selfish to do this to her and why now when she is going to need me the most?

I grip Carleen's hand as tight as I can, I don't want to let her go! I never want to let her go! I want her to know how much I love her and how sorry I am for what has just happened, but there are no words to describe how deeply my love runs. Words are so meaningless when you are faced with the very real possibility that you are experiencing the last embrace with your true soul mate.

All the other people in the room have disappeared from my consciousness. It is just Carleen and I, and somehow the physical pain, while still very real, takes a back seat. My physical world is as big as Carleen's touch and my emotional world, the unbreakable bond between us. At once, this moment is both an eternity and fleeting moment in time, only broken by the gentle, but heart-wrenching, interruption from one of the medical staff to say that they really have to take me away now. I can't imagine how this makes Carleen feel. All I know is that my heart feels like it is being ripped from my chest. I am in dispair. What if I never see her again? "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

I know I have to go and I know I have to be brave. "I will see you soon", I try to say in a reassuring voice, but its quickly followed by "I'm so sorry" and any sense of reassurance disappears. The gurney starts to move and Carleen comes with me. This is a short journey but one that is so incredibly frightening and at the end of it I know I have to let go. I don't want to let go, please don't make me let go! Our hands drift apart and we have one last embrace. "I love you Carleen. I love you..."

I am now on the darkest and lonliest journey anyone can take. My world has gone. I am vulnerable, exposed and alone, and I finally truly admit to myself that this could be the end. A mask appears above my head and everything fades to black...

Overwhelmed

2010-05-29T15:07:00.000+12:00

I have been overwhelmed by the messages of support that I have received since my story ran on Sport Lately and in the Tri NZ Newsletter. Some of the messages have come from complete strangers and others from friends and family. Many of the messages have elicited a strong emotional response from me and all have added to my strength and resolve to continue training and to knock off Challenge Wanaka.

Its great to know that my story is having an impact and I hope that I can continue to deliver both in terms of my acheivements and in continuing to tell my story in a way that is engaging and interesting. I have so many posts written in my head already that I don't really know where to start. I promise to keep training hard and to keep the posts flowing.

Thanks for the overwhelmingly positive messages - they are incredibly motivating and are an inspiration to me!

What a glorious feelin'?!?!

2010-05-28T16:54:00.000+12:00

It might be a glorious feeling singing in the rain, but I am not so sure that its that glorious when you are cycling in the rain. Persistent rain and low cloud all day (again!) had me totally undecided on whether I'd do my planned ride for the day in the garrage on my trainer or along Portobello Road. At 9:30 it was inside, by 10:30 it was outside, then inside again by 11:30 and then, after having purchased some new lights from the boys at the Cycle Surgery so that I could be seen, I finally decided to harden up and head out along the Peninsula.

Once again, I wasn't sure if this was bike training or training for the swim leg. I haven't been so wet in ages and the head wind coming back was driving the rain right into my face. Did I mention that it was only 5 degrees too?

Another to add drag up from the memory banks in January...

Rain, Hail and (not much) Shine

2010-05-27T22:30:00.000+12:00

This week is going to be one of those training weeks that, when the going gets tough and I'm hurting like hell in the Challenge, I'll dredge up from the memory banks. I'll be using as motivation - 'if I trained through that, I can finish this damn race'.

On Tuesday I did my 8 x 400m at 5km pace in a torrential downpour. That day Dunedin received 77mm of rain and, while it wasn't terribly cold, I wasn't sure if I was training for the run or the swim.

This morning I was out on the bike with snow on the hills and a nasty southerly blasting through the city. It was all of about 3 degrees and about half way through my warm up (and I use that term 'warm' very liberally) for my hill workout it began to hail. Thankfully the roads did not get too slippery, but hail stones pelting my face weren't at all pleasant.

As if that wasn't enough, I went out again this afternoon in the freezing wind and punished myself with 50 second hill repeat runs at 90-95% effort. The lactic acid burned my quads after just 20-30 seconds and I had to grind out the last 20 odd seconds.

The things we do in pursuit of our goals!

Sport Lately radio interview

2010-05-27T17:20:00.000+12:00

For those of you who missed my first interview on Sport Lately (25/05/2010), here it is.

Thanks to Gracie Productions for allowing me to post it here.

Five Minutes of Fame

2010-05-25T22:08:00.000+12:00

Tonight I was interviewed by Mark Watson of Sport Lately on Radio Sport. (Radio Sport is my favourite radio station. You see, deep down I am a sports junkie. So much so that I have resisted getting Sky Television as I know I'd watch a game of tiddly winks if it was on.) I had emailled a link to my blog and brief outline of my story to Andrew Dewhurst (the show's co-presenter and producer of another show - the High Performance Hour) as I knew the High Performance Hour had a 'Things We Like' section I thought they might give this blog a plug. Andrew liked it enough to ask me to put together a brief story for the TriNZ newsletter and he passed that story on to Mark.

When I got the call from Mark this afternoon, I got a bit of a shock as I hadn't expected it to go beyond the newsletter. I got even more of a shock when I heard Mark's intro at the top of the show. He described my story of one of courage and determination (and I guess it is), but for some reason it stirred something deep inside me and emotions started to bubble away - a lot of pride, a little bit of fear (of letting people down now that I was beginning to create expectations), some sadness (as I reflected on my accident) and even a bit of vanity that someone had considered me worthy of such praise. My breath shortened and a few tears welled up, but I left the room to gather my thoughts and calm my emotions.

The interview went well and I was blown away with the way in which Mark portrayed my story. When he announced at the end of the interview that they are going to check up on me every three months and that the nation would be following me through my training, I began to lose it. I managed to get out a genuinely heartfelt thanks on air and then, when the producer thanked me off air, I could feel bubbling emotions heading to the surface. I could hear my mobile phone recieving several texts from many of those who read my blog.

As I entered the living room the rest of the Mark's story was still being broadcast. Carleen tells me to hush as Mark reads the first paragraph of the story I had sent to Andrew and then I hear him say people like me are "the true heroes of New Zealand sport" and I become a blubering mess. I can't tell you exactly why, I really don't know. I wasn't sad and I wasn't happy, perhaps it was just a realisation of exactly what I have set out to do and what it means to me and to the people around me. Carleen embraced me and I was instantly calmer and then came the inevitable phone call from my parents. I answered, but could not speak. Eventually I controlled my emotions and Mum and I spoke for a few minutes about how proud Mum and Dad are of me.

Who knew five minutes of fame could be so emotionally draining.