A BIG thank you to all of you

Over the last weeks I've been getting messages from a lot of you telling me how great I'm doing and how impressive and inspiring I am. Unfortunately I haven't had time yet to reply to everyone individually. After work, training and sleeping there just isn't much time left for anything else ;-)

So I decided to just post a BIG thank you to all of you on my blog!

Your support and encouragement really means a lot and is very motivating.

I keep telling myself that I am doing this for me and not to get anyone else's approval, recognition or admiration. But let's be honest, if that were completely true I probably wouldn't blog about it ;-)

All of your comments and messages are very motivating and just make me feel really good about myself, especially on days when things are not going so well.

So THANK YOU SO MUCH for your support and PLEASE keep the motivation and encouragement coming, I'm going to need it if I want to complete a half marathon in just over 5 weeks.

A visit to the half marathon course - I HATE hills

One of the things I found difficult about the event I did last week, was not knowing the course. It kind of made it impossible to plan and structure my race correctly if I don't know what's coming my way - especially what types of hills are coming my way.

Hills are my biggest problem at this stage. The thing is, I simply can't run up hill without being totally beat once I get to the top. When I'm doing my short 5 or 6km runs than that is not such a big problem, but when I'm doing 14km (or even more) and I'm totally beat after 3km just cause I had to run uphill I'm never gonna see the finish line. That is why I usually walk uphill on my long runs. I know it's cheating a little bit but what can I do. For my defence, I grew up in one of the flattest areas of Germany, so I'm simply not used to hills. What we call mountains in that area of Germany is a total joke to any really Kiwi.

However, unfortunately I have decided to do my very first half marathon on an volcanic island and that means that there will be a quite a few smaller and larger hills along the course, not to mention to harbour bridge.

But I'm getting of topic a little here. The point is, I like to know the course I'm running so that I know how many uphill and downhill parts there are and how steep they are. That is why I decided to do some of my long runs on the actual marathon course. So yesterday I drove over to the North Shore, where the marathon will start, and did the first 7km of the course, then turned around and by the time I got back to me car I had done just over 13 km. Now, if you read my post about my training plan you might remember that I was suppose to do 15km this week. There are a couple of reasons why that didn't happen. First of all, the course was quite tough with lots of uphill parts. In addition it was REALLY windy (we're having a storm the size of Australia passing over NZ at the moment) and most of the first 7km I had headwind which made the uphill parts even harder and the downhill parts less relaxing.
The other problem was that, despite the wind, it was sunny and sort of warm and I ran out of water. Turns out that really sucks! The last time I did 14km was at the run/walk event and there were drinks available along the course. That, in addition to the water I always take with me when running, meant that I had more than enough liquid. But only having my 750ml water bottle, like yesterday, is just not enough. That means I need to figure out a way to either take more water with me next time or get some more somewhere along the way.
Anyway, as I was already really exhausted after about 11.5km and had no more water left I decided to take the straight way back to my car instead of doing the extra 1.8km detour as I had planned.

Well, I made it back to the car and the good news is that my muscles are nowhere near as sore as they were after the 14km last weekend so hopefully that means that my body is getting used to it.
So the overall impression of the first 7km of the course: Hilly (well, at least based on my standards) - and I HATE hills. And I need water - lots of it. Especially when it's sunny.

This coming week is recovery week which means my long run on Saturday will be shorter. But I'm trying to increase the distances I do during the week a little (the hard part here is that it would mean to get up even earlier than I already do). On Saturday I will do the next 6km of the course (and back so that it ends up being about 12km).

just a few more comments about Saturday's event

It's Monday evening and I'm still a bit sore from the run on Saturday. Funnily I feel it a lot when I'm walking but during my run this morning I actually felt alright.
I already posted an official report about the event on the weekend (my first running even ever) but there are a few more (not always completely serious) comments I would like to add:

1. It's unbelievable how fast some people can WALK (and I really mean walk, not run). I mean, there I am running as fast as I can and this person just WALKS right past me!
2. The mix of people at this event (and I imagine other run/walk event will be similar) was really interesting. All ages, sizes, attitudes and levels of fitness - VERY COOL!
3. Running past the finish line to do another 7km loop was really tough - I can only imagine how those people that did 4 loops must have felt about that when they passed the finish line for the 3rd time.
4. Feeling really tired, thinking the 10km sign has to show up any second now and then seeing the 9km sign just up ahead is very frustrating!
5. The fluid dilemma: Whenever I drank something during the race I could feel the fluid swap around in my stomach afterwards. Kind of made me feel sick. But not drinking anything is not really an option either. Have to practice to drink slower and less at a time!
6. Around km 11 (just after it started raining) I seriously doubted my own sanity - Why the hell am I doing this again?
7. Around km 12 I thought it would be really cool if Artemon (my horse) where here. This would be so much more fun (easier and faster) if he would do the running.
8. Around km 13 the iPod played 'Save me from Remy Zero' - Very fitting!
9. Putting 6 flights of stairs between the finish line and my car is just mean!

14km in under 2 hours - offical race report ;-)

I did it!!!!!!

14km in under two hours, 01:55:44 to be exact. And let me tell you, it was tough but also feels really good. But let's start at the beginning.

The event was at Waitakere Trust Stadium, which is about 15km from where I live. The run started at 9am but as I still had to register and wanted to make sure I had plenty of time, I made sure I arrived early. So I got up at about 6.45 (on a Saturday!!!!!!!!!) and left at around 7.30. I got to the stadium just before 8am and it was still very quite and only few people around. I went to registration and picked up by number and timing chip (this little thing to tie to your shoe so they can take an exact time for you) and then spent some time figuring out how best to attach both of them (it's not that simple when you're doing something like this for the first time). But I just observed how others did it and copied that. I then spend some time just walking around, eating an energy bar, stretching etc.

At 8.50 the organiser did a quick event briefing to make sure everyone knows what's gonna happen and then at 9am sharp of we went. As I am doing a mix of running and walking I started in about the middle of the back half, sort of behind the runners and before the walkers.

The track was a 7km loop which I had to do twice. I've inserted a map of the loop below. The quality is not so good, so it you want to get a better look, follow this link.

There was only one bigger hill at the beginning, the rest was just slightly rolling - typical for Auckland. About the first 4km we were running through a residential area. I felt good in the beginning and was happy that the good night sleep I got meant that I felt much better then yesterday. After 4km the track went along a river, first on one side and then on the other for about 2km. That was the nicest part of the track with the river on one side and trees and bushes on the other. After the river track we had to walk/run uphill to the stadium again, then once around the stadium round and then of into loop two and do the whole thing again.

I was having a low towards the end of loop one and running past the finish line knowing I had to do the whole thing again was really tough. I finished my first loop around 55 minutes so I knew I was on goal to finish in under 2 hours. At the same time, however, I also knew that the second loop could not be much slower than the first. But to see that I was on track motivated me and I started to feel a bit better again. I made good time in the first half of loop two but then from around km 11 it got really tough. The longest run I had done so far was 12km just two weeks ago, so everything longer than that was really stretching my boundaries. And the fact that it started raining a little wasn't really helping either.

I had to walk quite a bit in that second half of loop two but wasn't too worried because I could see on my watch that I was still on track to finish in under 2 hours. Once I made it up to the Stadium I pushed myself a bit harder again and was able to run most of the last km. Most importantly, I RAN across the finish line (I was a bit worried I might be crawling over the finish line, so that's a really success).

And here is what I looked like after I finished. (I do admit this picture was taken after I recovered a little and was able to smile again)

Overall, I'm really happy and proud. First of all that I was able to actually complete a 14km run/walk and secondly that I achieved my goal to finish in under 2 hours. That means I'm on track for the half marathon!

After I got home I took a shower and went back to bed (with a BIG cup of coffee of course). My legs were feeling really heavy and I was sooo tired. But they all say you have to stay active on the day of the race and NOT just be lazy to avoid muscle soreness etc. Well, luckily I got the long awaited message yesterday that my iPhone finally arrive and what better motivation to get out of bed than to go and pick it up ;-)

OK, honestly I'm too tired to write anymore right now, but I might add a few race details tomorrow.

A quick pre-first-ever-race update

I'm less than 12 hours away from doing my first running event ever. How would have thought I would EVER do something like that.
The only problem is, right now I'm so not in the mood for running 14km tomorrow morning.
I had one of those really crazy weeks at work. I haven't been home before 8 once this week and doing my exercising before work means my days start at 6am these days. So I'm exhausted and really tired and would really like to just sleep in tomorrow and have a lazy day. It's moments like these when this whole half-marathon thing seems like a really bad idea.
I guess in a way it's kind of good that I have the event tomorrow because if I would just run on my own I might have cheated a little. This way I'm sort of forced to see it through.
So the best thing to do is probably just to go to bed early and try to get as much sleep as possible and then just go for it tomorrow. My goal is to finish around 2 hours.
OK, tomorrow I will tell you all about the even (hopefully with good news).

I love those days were I can really see the progress

Today is one of those days where I can really see the progress I'm making. Sometimes it feels like I'm not really getting any better for weeks which can be kind of frustrating, but then there are those days like today where the difference to just a few weeks ago is just huge.
It's Saturday and you all know what that means - Long run day!
However, it's also recovery week (My training plan always has two 'build' weeks followed by one week recovery). That means, I did 'only' 10km today. Only seems a funny word in this context (unless you take into account that one of my flatmates ran 30km!!!!! this morning) but after doing 12km last Saturday it's 'only' 10 this week.
The point I'm trying to make here, is that I ran 10km and I felt great the whole time. It took me about 80 minutes of which I ran 48min & 30seconds! In comparison, when I did 10.5km 2 weeks ago I only ran 41minutes and it took me almost 90 minutes.
Besides that I felt really good and was able to run for over 4minutes even towards the end before I had to walk for a little.
I've generally been having a good week. As I mentioned before my sisters was staying with me for two weeks and we did some traveling around New Zealand which was just AWESOME. However, it meant that my exercise routines got a little messed up and so did my diet. But despite that I still lost some weight during these two weeks which is just really great. I'm happy to know that I can make little exceptions every now and then, as long as I keep up a minimum of physical activity.
Nevertheless, I've been really looking froward to this weekend to get some rest as the last two weeks have been pretty full on. And given that I already know I'll be working late everyday next week AND have my 14km race next Saturday it's probably good to the rest while I can.