Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Winter cold

First day of winter tomorrow and the winter cold has arrived a day early! Mr Lulu caught it first and I thought I might escape but no such luck... yuk. So spending the day at home, keeping warm and sitting close to a box of tissues..

posted by Lulu @ 11:09 AM 0 comments

Monday, May 30, 2005

First run after SMH half

Up and out in the crisp morning air to see if the legs have recovered. Took an easy 40 mins run down to Centennial Park and back up the hill to Bronte. Felt pretty good and although the legs felt a little bit heavy I enjoyed just being running and not worrying about how slow I'm going! After a week off I thought I better get back out there before I lost the routine and ended up as a couch potato.

posted by Lulu @ 10:30 AM 0 comments

Sunday, May 29, 2005

Recovery week

This week is a week for recovery. Monday my quads and hips were really stiff and sore and going downstairs was quite painful to say the least.

Tuesday saw me off to the gym for Pilates, a 45 min Reformer class. It sounds nasty "the reformer" but its only the bed that we use for Pilates - it adds resistance in the form of springs, and is great for building upper body strength and tone as well as core and leg strength. A massage with the sports masseur in the evening loosened up some of the sore bits and by Wednesday I was feeling pretty good.

Not much other activity this week apart from another Reformer class on Saturday.

The runner's high and sense of achievement continued for much of the week and I felt great apart from the sore bits and rashly said I was going to do another half in Sept. We'll see!

posted by Lulu @ 1:45 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Sunday May 22nd 2005: I did a half marathon!

Well I did a half marathon! It's been a long road to achieve the goal that I set myself a couple of years ago. I've been running on and off for about 4 years and I've finally been able to train consistently for about 6 months and make it to the start line without becoming injured.

I was less nervous about the race than I thought I would be. I was more nervous about the Mother's Day Classic we'd done a few weeks before and any remaining nerves were put to rest after doing a quick warm up and realising that yes my legs do work and I can run... and then the lovely Lucky Legs to the rescue. We'd met before at a previous race and she recognised me. I lined up for the start with her whilst Mr Lulu went to be nearer the front for a good start. Lucky Legs was great, offering me sound words of advice and keeping my nerves under control.. then we were off. I said 'good luck' to LL and headed off.

I really enjoyed the race, which was a great surprise to me.. hey maybe this running thing is fun after all! I took it pretty steadily at the start, or so I thought but the first 5km split was still my fastest. After the first 10km I was feeling pretty good and grabbed a water at about 11km and headed off for the second lap. At about the 16km mark I realised that I was in fact going to finish a half marathon and I felt a real sense of 'empowerment' ( I hate that word normally, much overused by "management", but it seems appropriate here). I was going to make it!

For the last 5km I knew I was slowing down but kept pushing away.. that second time up Argyle Street was tough but I knew it was flat and downhill from there and the CR cheersquad were there to give me a cheer. Down the hill and onto the final straight. That last km seemed a lot longer than it did the first two times along Hickson Road. A few CRs shouted encouragement and I kept plodding along and there was the finish.. I even managed a minor sprint for the finish which nearly ended in tears when the 2 runners in front of me stopped short of the finish line and I ran into the back of them. Then it was over and there was Mr Lulu just after the finish chute "oh my god I did it" were my words to him and then gave him a big sweaty hug and shed a few tears! I'm very glad the lovely volunteers were there to take off the timing chip as I'm not sure I could have bent down to do it!

I felt tired but not totally stuffed and although my time of 2 hrs 14 mins is not going to win me any prizes I still felt the greatest sense of achievement than from anything I've done in a long time. Probably because I'm not a natural athlete ( to put it mildly!) and I put in 18 weeks of consistent training which was quite hard work at times, but I stuck with it.

The bad news was that my poor husband did not have such a great day - between 1 and 2km his calf muscle tore and that was the end of his race. I did wonder why I didn't see him at all on the course but he considerately kept himself out of view so that I didn't worry about him. So it was home for some ice on his leg and a warm bath for me followed by a nice lunch at one of our favourite restaurants in Bondi ( bondi social) with its fantastic view over beautiful Bondi Beach.. what a way to celebrate!

posted by Lulu @ 5:13 AM 1 comments