Foxes, ducks, sleep and other stuff

It's been a week or so since I checked in. And WHAT a week. My lord. Best description of the last seven days is that I put my head down, and someone whacked me around the head with a wet mullet.

Not really sure where to start..

Have you ever heard people talk about the need to rest well in order to train hard? Well I can officially vouch for that. Picture this. Friday night ...after the a monster, mullet-slapping week. It's around midnight, house full of people... all on the couch (world's most comfortable couch, by the way). One minute I'm looking at a frock on line. The next, I wake up, and the house is empty, save Jessie D and AmyAnna. What the heck? I apparently crashed and burned...the emphasis on crash. So I sleep. Lots.

On Saturday, I wake up with a sore throat. Achy. I have a massage, intending to go for my 90 minute run around 5. I put my head down at 1.30pm. I wake up at 5.30pm. Feel like a stoned porcupine .... I go to bed at 8pm. Yes, 8pm. Sleep through to 6.30am Sunday. Wake feeling like a new woman. Like Barbie, fresh outta the factory.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Sleep is often the only weapon against feeling-like-crap-itis.

Along comes Monday. This 90 minute run is haunting me. I know i have to do it, because if I skip it, I can kiss goodbye to Darlington.

I wake at 5am on Monday and head out from my place.

It is a GORGEOUS morning for a run. A touch humid, but still as bro...

I run around Herdsman and it's just incredible. The sun coming up over the city, and across the water. About 40 mins into the run, I'm in the bowels of the reserve, kinda deep into the wetland area and there he is. A fox!! Fantastic, Mr Fox I presume..

A russet red, beady eyed, bushy tailed fox. He stops in the middle of the path, about 10 metres away from me. We stare each other down (kind a feels like Home and Away, right?)

All the ducks and swans are going bananas ....Channelling my inner 4 year old, I rip my earphones out and screech..."RUN AWAY DUCK, FOR GOD's SAKE ...RUN AWAY...!"

As Lozzie often says, I'm not that good in a crisis. And seeing a fox maul a duck / swan / water bird would have definitely counted as a crisis. But! My insane screaming scared the stuffing out of Mr Fantastic and he jumped into the stream, ignoring the floating buffet in front of him and race out onto the embankment.

By now all the birds (me included) were still screaming and the next thing I know, Fantastic gave me one last glare, before ducking away into the reeds. I know he was a man, because Fantastic couldn't stand the sound of ladies yelling at the tops of their lungs.

The rest of the run was boring by comparison. and it hurt. I'm now more afraid of Darlington than ever before because I know how hard it is. i remember. And this run was flat.

I'll spare you the violins because while I was running I did think about GP, who is not well. He is doing quite badly actually so I kept on shuffling, really thankful that I can shuffle.

So there you go. Let that be a lesson for all of us. Get enough sleep. Yell at a fox and he will run away, regardless of how fantastic he is. When you're doing it tough and wanting to quit, there is always someone, somewhere who wishes they were in our (running) shoes.

Chat soon

GT

Love Life. Love it NOW!

So by now most of you would have heard me talk a bit about my friends GP and BS - both staring cancer in the face right now. By way of an update, GP is right in the thick of his fourth course of Chemo. It's s**t. We wait until there are more tests. Then we wait some more. It's cruel and it's heartbreaking. BS is doing better. All reports are positive.

So without being morose and melodramatic, because neither of these two people are, it HAS changed my perspective. I don't get as cranky about the dogs scratching my floorboards. I am a lot more thankful for small things. I don't care as much about what people may or may not think of me.

Which leads me to today. I ducked into Leederville this morning to have a quick breakfast at Cranked, and there she was. My 5 year old neice, out having breaky with her Dad..my big brother.

Get one thing straight. I ADORE this child. I love her beyond words. We have the best time together. So we have a good old chat and then she asks me if we can do our normal thing, which is where we lie down on the grass together outside of Cranked and take a photo on my blackberry. It's kind of how we roll. Now this usually happens after work on a weekend. Not first thing during peak hour when I'm all frocked up.

Ahh what the hell. I kicked off my shoes, hitched up my frock and lay down on the lawn with my niece. Strange looks? Who cares. Life is precious and so is she. Long after she's too cool to hang out with me on the lawn in my work frock, I will cherish this and so many other moments like it.

So that's how the day started. And it finished with a quick 7km around Lake Monger. I ended up a sweaty, happy mess after shaving 1 minute and a half off my 7km time.

It was also super fun because I drafted off my client (without know it was him) for half of that time...

Running around the lake is great fun because, if you actually take the time to notice, there is SO much going on. Like the bunch of school boys doing pre-season, TEARING around that lake as if there were free beer waiting for them at the end. Oh. Hang on...

Like ducks. Have you EVER noticed how ... functional they are? If I didn't believe in God as a creator, I would swear they were made at Ikea. I mean, all their bits just fold away neatly. Ingenious.

Like the bloke walking his two Great Danes. Man, those things were bigger than the first Shetland pony I ever rode.

Like the the really fast people who LOPE past me without so much as a puff, making me consider (albeit momentarily) how i can trip them up without getting caught.

So much to notice. So much to be thankful for and so much to love about life.

Chat soon.

GT

Things I love and hate about running.

Here's my list - feel free to add yours.

Things I Love

Wicked endorphins

Helps me clear my head and gives me space to think

De-stresses me

Gets me fit and strong

Gives me perspective

Shows me what my body can do

Increases my capacity at work

Easy to do, even when I'm traveling

Seeing lots of other, happy runners out on the track.

Things I Hate

Chafing from my bra and my heart rate monitor

Arguing with myself when the run gets hard

The easterly and the sea breeze, respectively

Shows me what my body can do

Wearing the wrong socks and getting a shocker of a blister

Getting a salt encrusted face.

When fast people run past me and they're not even puffed

My Body is a mystery to me...

I am making a serious effort to get to know my body. For the past 30 odd years, I've done my best to ignore it. I mean, I have a degree in politics and journalism - what do I need to understand my body for? Its better for everyone if I just continue to ignore it unless it gives me reason to do otherwise, like Gastro. Yep. That's a good reason to notice my body...

This morning - classic case in point. 5.30am and I'm strapping on my heart rate monitor. My resting heart rate is a little high. Not a good sign. My client and friend, JN, is an experienced athlete. To put you in the picture, he celebrated his 50th birthday by doing a FULL iron man distance triathlon, and backed it up 10 days later by running the New York Marathon. He knows a thing or two about training. He told me once that the legend that is Robert De Castella did a lot of his training load based on what his resting heart rate was when he woke in the morning. High heart rate meant his body was recovering still, or fighting something off. Normal heart rate meant go hard.

True? No idea but I have found that in my world, it can be true.

This morning, my body punished me for 7kms. It hurt. I found it hard to find my pace and my heart rate was through the roof for the whole run. Though I shaved another minute off my 7km time, it was neither pretty nor fun.

But here's the thing....I ALSO woke up this morning feeling like I couldn't breathe very well, with a bit of a sore throat. I THOUGHT about staying home decided against it. My body flipped me the bird while I ran around Lake Monger. It yelled abuse in my ear.

Thus begins the dawning of a new day. I'm going to listen to my body a bit more and see where it gets me...even though I may have to occasionally tell it to mind the language.

Chat soon

GT

Hello GT , remember me? I'm Reabold Hill...

When we were in Maui last year, Langer and I drove to the summit of the Haleakala Crater. I remember it so well for so many reasons. Primarily because of the altitude sickness. It knocked me for six. One minute I was cruising along in the rental Jeep-of-Glory, then next I was passed out with a monster headache...

Secondly, because it felt like we would drive in the clouds and the rain forever, but then, when we least expected it, we burst through the clouds and there we were...10 thousand feet above sea level, right on top of the world. It literally took my breath away.

Haleakala means "House of the Sun" ...check out these pics and you'll see why..

I thought about that trip this morning when I was out running.
It was my first hill session in about a year. I knew it would hurt and it did. It hurt. Did I mention that i really hurt...?
Before you get all funny on me, I'm not about to draw a metaphor about ascending the Haleakala Crater and running Reabold hill.
That would be a totally bollocks analogy.
No, I just remembered the trip while I was running and wanted to share it because it was one of the most amazing things I've ever had the pleasure of seeing.
So back to this morning. Reabold hill is NOT a volcano. It is Not 10 thousand feet above sea level. At 93 metres high, it's the tallest peak on the Swan Coastal Plain. The track I run there is the old road that used to be single lane but both ways.
Anyone who grew up around that area like I did, will know it well. Now, the road is a running, walking and cycle track. It's 800ms to the top and it's steep as bro..
This morning I knocked of circuits ascents. It hurt but it felt good. And when i got to the top, I could see the whole city. Such a beautiful morning as the sun came up, and rather than being a hot, stuffy morning, the air was clean and crisp. In a word stunning.
And even though it hurt like a poke in the eye with a blunt twig, it was one of those mornings that made me so glad to be a runner.

Have an amazing week.

Chat soon
GT