Focusing In

"Focusing In". That's the heading on my programme for the next 4 weeks. Weeks 1-12 were all about preparing me for this block of 4 weeks. I am tired but not exhausted. I think my body is getting used to the early mornings etc.... although I still don't like getting up early that's for sure. A few people have asked me if I'm getting excited but to be honest , while I have visualized crossing the finish line, I have thought little on the day itself and more on what I have on "today". So I'm not nervous yet but there's plenty of time for that!!!

Monday.... got a good 3km swim under my belt this morning. Today at least I managed to hold on. This afternoon I had an 18km run. After procrastinating for about an hour I headed out. I am fine once I get going. At about the 12km mark I ran into the gorgeous, bubbly Maria McNeil. It was great to see her and we chatted as We ran together for a few k's. She is still recovering from a bout of swine flu , poor thing, so it was good to see her on the road and starting to get back into it. Thanks for the company Maria!!!!

Tuesday..... 50k bike this morning with 8 short hill repeats at max effort...phew!!! Although hard I am definitely managing these short hills way better than I was weeks ago.

For the afternoon session Brad picked me up and we headed out to the track. OK... I know I've only had 3 track sessions, but here's the truth. I have always, always , hated intervals. But I have to say I am really enjoying these sessions. Each week has been different. Tonight I did a total of 12kms. In that I had 4 x 1kms ( with 1 min recovery between each km) then 3 x 1kms (same recovery)..add on warm ups,recovery and cool downs. My 1kms I had to hold at 4.54. No faster no slower . It has always been such a mental thing with me to be able to run under 5 min ks . When I first started running I could barely manage 6min kms. Now I see myself running under the 5 it has a real affect in switching my mind set. I know I'm not holding this over long k's but I'm starting to get a feel for pace and how my body feels at certain paces.

Afterwards We hit the burger place again with both my boys joining us (Kale and Jordan). It was nice to have them along but expensive!!!!!! Maybe next week they can shout me dinner!!

Not the clearest picture but here's where we do our interval sessions..


Wednesday... struggled with my asthma again this morning in the pool. Note to self...make doctors appointment and get that looked at. Managed 2.5k.

Anna couldn't make this arvo's spin session so did that one on my own.90min session with the main set consisting of 2 x 15mins at 85 to 92% heart rate,7min recovery between each than 20mins at tempo. Add warm up etc and it was a good , hard session.

Thursday was supposed to be a double day run. Since Tuesday's track session my left heel had been feeling a little tender. Even driving and resting the heel on the floor of the car was a little painful. So I decided to nurse it today and do my 2 sessions on the cross trainer. Boy you work hard so didn't feel like I was opting out. So I did equivalent of 12k for the first session and 13k for the second one.

Friday ...swim (2.7k)

This morning (Saturday). Will , Sarah and I met under the bridge south of the river like we did a couple of weeks ago to do our ride. We only had 80k to do today!!!! YAY ..After the last few heavy weeks it felt like someone had given me a gift!! As usual it was windy . In fact when we started out in the morning it was whipping thru under the bridge and it was freezing cold but once you get started you always warm up pretty quick.I had my new race wheels on today. Nice smooth ride . Don't know if they made me go any faster though.

Will's brother and fellow work mate also joined up for a little while. Danny and Dan with Will are doing the Santos Perth ride in a couple of weeks. Today they did 52k which is a great effort when you haven't done alot of riding before. Let's hope they are enjoying it enough that they might continue their riding after the event is over. When we got back to the car there was a message from Danny (Will's brother) to say that his bike had come off the bike rack while doing 100km @ hour down the freeway. Wheels went one way , bike frame the other. His bike has had it . Lucky he didn't cause an accident!!! Hopefully this doesn't end his cycling career!!!!!

Look who got new race wheels !!!!!!

So ...back to after the ride. Poor Sarah is still having trouble with her knee and found it difficult to even walk so she unfortunately couldn't run. Will had to go and check out some electrical work at his other brothers house( yes there are more!!) . He lives in Dalkeith, Will drove there and I ran there. I had to do 12k and I knew that it was at least 10k to Rob's house. But with the Garmin its easy so off i went. What a lovely run. Not only did I have the wind behind me ( which was soooo nice after that ride) , i had the river on my left and Kings Park on my right. Up to Matilda Bay and just continued following the path then backtracked to Rob's house..12 pleasant kms done!!!

Sunday.. another ride today this time 150k and this time MORE WIND!!! what a surprise......

Sarah, Anna and I all left our houses around 5am. I headed up towards them, they to me and when we met up we then headed to Fremantle. From Fremantle we then turned into the wind for the hard slog to Yanchep. There was also another ride happening today...ride for MS. So on our way back from Freo they had one lane blocked off to traffic for bikes along West Coast Hwy. Very nice.We had the lane all to ourselves. Wouldn't it be nice to have that all the time. So off to Yanchep then turned around back to home then back to Iluka and then finally....home. That was one tough ride and very glad its over.

In the afternoon we had been invited to my friends house for a BBQ. I was really looking forward to catching up with everyone as I hadn't seen them for awhile. Helen (my friend), made it for the afternoon especially to fit in with me and my training which was really sweet. I have known Helen since year 5 at school . It's really important to her that we don't lose contact with each other so twice a year she organises a girls weekend . Usually there's about 8-10 of us who have known each other since we were about 9 years old!!! We have a great time and most of us look forward religiously to them.

Back L-R Me and Helen

Front L-R Meredith (school friend) and Karen (neighbour)

This weeks training

Swim...3 hrs....8.2kms

Run...5hrs 57mins....66kms

Bike....12hrs.....335kms

Total. 20hrs 57mins

From here on in I think it's going to be important for me to try and stay really focused. Accept feeling tired and direct my thoughts to really trying to get the most out of each and every session I have left..

A positive thinker

does not refuse to recognize the negative;

he refuses to dwell on it.

Positive thinking is a form of thought which

habitually looks for the best results

from the worst conditions...

Norman Vincent Peale, 1893-1993

American Writer, Minister

Recovery Week

Well ... this was a week to recover and enjoy because the next block of 4 weeks is a killer!! So that's what I have tried to do.




Monday morning in the pool. The mornings are so light now and warm , its not hard at all getting up . 5am is certainly a reasonable time of the morning and there are alot of people out walking , running at that time. I was very much looking forward to my massage this afternoon so you can understand how devastated I felt when the lady rang and cancelled on me due to illness. Terrible for her I know but I really , really , really wanted that massage!!!! Then, to add further "pain to the wound" the Mr Whippy van came around in the afternoon but she had run out of icecream. I mean really...... In the afternoon met up with Sarah down at Dome for a quick catch up. We don't get to talk alot while out training so it was nice to have the down time to touch base and see how each other was getting along.




Tuesday morning up early again for an 80k ride. There was an amazing full moon. I can't believe how much light there is in a full moon!!!. We had a strong southerly again. At least when you do laps you get a little reprieve from the wind . In the afternoon I was back on the Athletics track for intervals. Now that I have my pace that was set for me from last weeks 3km time trial , I now have a way of truly pacing myself throughout the session. I've never trained quite like this before so it was initially a little foreign to me. Normally I would set out quite strong but towards the end of the session fade considerably. Now my goal is to keep the pace consistent through the whole session. I have broken my time down into 100m lengths which is easy to measure on the track. After the session we headed off to a "different" burger joint down at Hillarys Marina. With any luck this could become a Tuesday night habit. I love not having to cook and the burger was delicious!!!!




At the pool today I had someone tell me (you know who you are!!!), that they have enjoyed reading my blog. I was really stoked to hear that people are actually reading it and find it interesting and not too boring and same same. In alot of ways it has become my reflection time. I sit at the end of the week and go over the past 7days. Assess what I've done, how I've felt. I have found it quite cathartic really.... and besides all that , I will have a record to maybe look back on in the future. The tricky bit is being honest with myself in print. Putting it out there can sometimes be a little scary but I believe the benefits outweigh the negative side effects from all that. Well back to the pool.... I'm still hanging in there, thank goodness. Today was a good session of 3.1k. In the afternoon it was the 3 girls again ( myself , Anna and Sarah) on the wind trainer for a 75min session.



Wednesday night saw me getting little if not any sleep. My poor husband was in agony from a tooth ache. He had just spent the past 2 weeks getting a whole lot of work done to his teeth and for some reason one of them was giving him some major grief. From midnight to 3am I was awake and knew that if I didn't get even a couple of hours sleep I wasn't going to be much good to anyone. So I did a quick mental change of my program in my head, messaged Nat to let her know I wasn't going to make our planned 60k ride and tried to get a little shut eye. My plan was to do my ride on the windtrainer in the afternoon ( which by the way I did ) then move my 15k run to the following afternoon.



So let's jump to Friday. I did get my swim in but not my run. My dad had got out of hospital the day before after having a hernia operation and by the time I went out to see him, have a chat and a cuppa, get home, it was 6 0'clock. Then it was get everything ready for the ride the following morning. It was the first time I didn't beat myself up over missing a session ... and it felt good!!!! Yay, I'm learning.



Can you believe it, I was excited today about only having to do a 120k ride. Who would have thought. Four weeks ago I would have been stressed about that but today it was more of a relief. As per usual there was a strong wind so the return trip home was tough. But I felt really good, kept up with the group and finished off managing not to lose too much pace on the way back.With an 8km run to finish off the day I headed home to hit the kitchen to make some salads. My sister-in-law was having all the family over ( ours and her husbands). It was a great night. My brother-in-laws family are very musical and after dinner and dishes were done, out came the guitars, tambourines and shakers. And yes I love to get into the thick of it all. A little Chicago, a little Neil Young!!! Ah I just love it!!! But as per usual I was the first to leave. They all kicked on till after 1am but by 10 I was snuggled up in bed as I had a swim and 20k run to do.







The water was pretty choppy and not too clear, but it certainly wasn't cold so that was good. I mean have a look at the picture..what magnificent beaches we have..We did a 40min swim , from the surf club up to the MAC club return which I've been told is about 2kms. A quick ( well kinda quick) transition and Sarah and I headed north for our run. I was feeling a little sick in the stomach before I started but it was really just minor. I had cereal with yoghurt before I left home instead of my usual muffin banana and honey. Maybe it was that or it could have been all the sea water I swallowed!! But something kept repeating on me. I made it to just before the 19km mark and had to stop and I felt like I was going to be sick. The feeling passed pretty quickly, with only just over 1km to go I finished in 1hr 49. While we were running we had talked about jumping back in the ocean after our run . Unfortunately by the time we got back to the surf club , the wind had really picked up so we just headed straight home.

Anna, Sarah,Nat and Jamie. Jamie is new to the club after moving here from Dubai...welcome

Remember me telling you about Will's tooth?? Well it just got worse and today he had to go to the doctors. It looks like a rather large abscess has formed and he's in quite alot of pain. He's now on antibiotics and will head back tomorrow when the dentist reopens.



This afternoon I met Sue and we went to see the movie "Eat,Pray,Love". It's a true story of a writer who leaves her life in New York and travels for a year to find herself (in a nutshell). I did think she was being rather self indulgent really. And then it made me think about my Ironman journey. It's also pretty self indulgent as well!!! You know I have no complaints. I feel very blessed to live the life I live but I think for myself, getting up and doing the same thing day after day can sometimes leave you a little empty. All that monotomy.. I think that's why I wanted to give Ironman a go. Shake my life up abit. Get the emotions going again. Get excited, scared, nervous, happy again!!!



Thanks for dropping by this week. If you read the blog why not drop me a comment and let me know what you "really" think.. Cheers







Ride.... 297.5kms....9hrs 54mins
Run...37kms........3hrs 17mins
Swim....10.5kms.....3hrs 40mins

Total of 16hrs 51mins



I haven't logged my weight for awhile because It seems to be fairly stagnant...maybe next week

Challenges are what makes life interesting, overcoming them is what makes life meaningful...

Mark Twain

Music,Music,Music

What an interesting week this week has been. Mainly ups with a couple of downs. Its interesting to actually sit back , without judgement, and really see how I am coping with this very new level of training.
Monday was my usual swim. As there wasn't alot of fast sets today I managed to hang onto the back of the pack and finish 2.9k today. The mornings are getting so much lighter and its quite nice to arrive at the pool in daylight for a change.
Tuesday morning had to get up at 2.45 as I wanted to be on the road by 3. I had 80k to do this morning. No efforts, no hill repeats . My averages are still low so I really need to give myself plenty of time to complete the distance. Sarah joined Nat and I this morning... the more the merrier. So now there's 3 silly females riding their bikes at ungodly hours of the morning. Nice to know I'm not the only crazy one out there.
In the afternoon I caught up for a very quick coffee with Nicki and Sarah-Jane. Shame we couldn't have chatted for longer but everyone had things to do and kids to pick up from school. Although short its still nice to take the time off to catch up with friends . These guys have both been really supportive and God knows I need as much support as possible.
Tuesday evening was the first interval training session for "The 6th Discipline", my brother's new coaching business. We met at the new athletics track just behind Challenge Stadium. Tonight there was only 2 of us, but hopefully as the word gets out the numbers will grow. As always Brad was extremely organised . After our warm up which consisted of a 12oom jog , stretches, 8 x 100m ,1 x 400 and 1 x 800 we had a 3km time trial. The times we did on our trial will now dictate for me my pace that I will need to stick to per 400m, each week at the track. After nearly throwing up( well not quite, but I was exhausted) Brad and I headed into Subiaco and had two unreal burgers at "Jus Burgers". I ordered the Lamb burger and Brad got the Vege, pumpkin and chick pea flavoured one. We then cut them in half and had a bit of both....YUMMO!!!
While in the pool for Wednesdays session I had my first hint of an asthma attack for a long time. I actually had to get out of the pool and have some ventolin which hasn't happened for ages. I continued the session which was all up 2.6k but just hung on. In the afternoon I had a 90min windtrainer session with Anna. The efforts in the main set are getting longer now. When we first started in week 1 we were doing 3 x 5min efforts , now we are doing 3 x 10min efforts. These efforts are hard. You can't talk as you try to keep the heart rate up in E3 zone (85-92%). You certainly work hard in these sessions!!!!
Thursday morning was a 50k ride with 5 x 5min efforts. The wind was howling at over 30kms an hour so every time we turned into the southerlies I counted them as my efforts. It was a tough ride and I was happy to get home in one piece this morning. At around 2pm this arvo I started to fade and fade fast. So much so that my scheduled 20km run just wasn't going to happen. It really is interesting how my body reacts to getting tired. I don't get angry or yell at the kids I just get weepy. It's quite pathetic really but I'm learning to go with it because it seems to pass... thank goodness. I had also been feeling "not right". Nothing major.... a little sore in my right ear and some tenderness under my right arm pit. Maybe my body was fighting something off, maybe not but after missing the run session I also made the decision to skip the swim session the following morning. By Friday afternoon I was definitely feeling a lot better . The afternoon session was a recovery ride on the windtrainer , staying in the small chain ring for 40kms.
As always when Saturday comes around I get a little nervous . I always get organised the night before, making sure drinks are made up , nutrition is packed in the bento box etc etc... so I was really disappointed with myself when I get to the start of the ride and realise I had left all my nutrition at home!!! There was no way I could ride 160kms without food. Lucky for me Will was also riding and so kindly gave me all his food leaving himself just enough to do a shorter ride... my hero!!! So off we go and from the very start of the ride I seemed to struggle. It was extremely windy with my bike on an extreme lean during parts of the ride. At times it seemed to just gust around and continuously change direction. This made me a little reluctant to get down on the tri-bars at times. As I said I was struggling. I got dropped pretty early on and from there on in it was head down and just try and get this done. Will came back for me and rode with me and at the 45k mark where a couple of us were turning around Sarah waited. The others were going ahead but Sarah and I were going to do laps. We tend to ride the same course most weeks so Sarah suggested we do the loops which would also help prepare us mentally for the laps we would be doing in Busselton. Will left us at the 90k mark and Sarah and I trudged on. I thought it was never going to finish...seriously! My average was low, only 28km.. so it did take forever. After getting back to Maccas I had a quick chat to the guys that had gone ahead and got back before me and then headed out to do my 11km run. That afternoon North Coast had a gathering for new and old members. A welcome and over view for those new to triathlon and a chance for old members to catch up. It was a great turn up with what looked to be about 80 to 90 people. Definitely something I think they should continue annually. From there my friend Sue dropped me at my sister and brother-in-laws house where we got some Thai take away and caught up on their fantastic holiday to Italy, a cruise and the U.S.A. By about 8 I was falling asleep at the table so I wasn't the best company.
Sunday and it's another big run today...30kms. I didn't head out till late as I am trying to enjoy just one morning a week not having to be controlled by an alarm clock. So after a lazy start to the morning I was off by about 9.30am. I don't know if it was the heat but there were hundreds of swarms of midgies out today. With a combination of sweat and sunscreen , I was covered in them by the time I got home. It was a hot run but a good chance to practice running in the hot part of the day which , if last year is anything to go by, is good practice.
After getting home I rushed and fussed around to get ready to head off to a meeting with friends. I had been looking forward to this for weeks. Before I got into Triathlons I spent just over 10 years singing in a community choir as well as a quartet. We sang in many different venues..His Majesties Theatre, festivals in Victoria, New Orleans, Fly by Night club and many others. I have so many special memories of those times and the people I sang with. It was great catching up with them all. The place was just filled with talk of happy times with lots of laughs. After about an hour we sang!!!! I hadn't sung for at least 3 years and I can't tell you what a joy it was to be surrounded by some very special people and sing totally without any inhibitions. It all came back to me...the words .... the harmonies...I remembered them all. What an absolutely wonderful finish to my week!!!!!!

This week
Swim...2hrs...5.5kms
Bike...13hrs 33 mins...376kms
Run...4hrs 35mins....48kms

Where words fail, Music speaks

Hans Christian Anderson

Very quiet in the pool today...where is everyone??? We had a good session today (2.8k). There was only 3 of us in lane 2 so I thought surely I would be able to keep up...NOT!! Anyway I worked hard and felt it afterwards. With my legs sore from the weekend and my arms sore from swimming I did a ring around to see if I could get in for a massage. I suppose leaving it to the last minute is not the way to go so with no luck for today I managed to book myself into a lady that lives nearby for Wednesday so I am looking forward to that.


My friend Nat is back from the World Championships in Budapest. She had a great race over there and is now home and having to motivate herself to get back into training for the Ironman . This is hard for her as up to now she has been doing the shorter, faster type training and now she has to build her endurance with the longer stuff. But she's a great athlete and I have no doubt that in a couple of weeks she'll be on top of her game. She has changed her start time at work so will be riding with me on a Tuesday and Thursday morning.... So it was great to have her ride with me this morning. Getting up at 3am is hard enough but when you know someone is waiting for you it seems to help. We did 70k this morning with 5 x 4min efforts with a 1min MSE (max sustainable effort ) at the end of each one. It was hard to get the body clock going but I think having each other spur the other on really helped.

Back in the pool again today . I think Ross needs to have a lane just for me inbetween lanes 1 and 2....ha ha. I just can't keep up!!!!! But I'm not giving up, it's early days yet. If I get lapped (which I did today) I get lapped. 2.7km today.. This afternoon Sarah and I hit the windtrainer. It was one of our lighter sessions compared to the past few weeks.. only 72mins. We got going early as today I was booked in for my massage. I was really looking forward to it. I don't think I have one spot in my body at the moment that doesn't hurt!!!! It was an unusual massage. Not as methodical as some I've had in the past but it was good. She really worked the whole body and I definately felt better afterwards. I've booked in for another one in a fortnights time after a big weekend of training which is when I really seem to pull up the sorest.

Up at 3 again this morning and on the bike by 3.30am. Very strange this morning with quite a lot of cars on the road. I think they are all young kids coming home from student night at the pub/clubs. Nathalie even was followed for awhile by one. Another reason its nice to be riding with someone else I must say. 60k this morning before my work day even starts. Work has been unusually busy . I say unusual because normally business drops off , just slightly, in the school holidays but its been the opposite for me. This is great but I really must put aside some time to do some paperwork .....very soon.
This afternoon was just a 12k run. Don't get me wrong. I don't normally consider 12k a short run but when you are doing long runs upwards of 20 you look forward to the shorter ones.

I didn't get up for swimming this morning. With nothing else on my program this afternoon , thought it would be a good chance to do a longer session in the pool without time constraints. It was good but forgot it was school holidays and there were kids everywhere.!!! Still.. i got my longer set in of 3.5kms. I was also supposed to do a Recovery Ride either on the road or the windtrainer. But as it sometimes does, life got in the way a little. I had to go pick up our car from the mechanics and by the time I got home and then got dinner ready it was 7 o'clock. Too late i say!!!! I had a big day coming up tomorrow !

This morning we decided to ride somewhere different so we met under the Narrows bridge on the south side at 5am. There was Dave, Anna, Craig, Sarah, Will, myself and a new member Lucas. Lucas has just moved to Perth from Melbourne and has joined North Coast. He is heading back to Victoria next week to do the "Bay in a Day" ride which covers 210kms. Apparently they get thousands and thousands of riders turn up for this ride..how cool. Anyway our plan for the morning was to do 150km on the bike with a 10km run around the bridges on our return. We were so lucky with the winds which really didn't pick up until we had about 30km to go on the ride. For most of us it was another milestone ride with our previous longest ride being 130km. Sarah was a little nervous about making the distance but I don't know why she road solidly and consistently the whole way and then had a nice steady run off the bike. Overall I was happy with my ride ..there was a moment around 135k where I was doubting my ability to make it to the end . I think my ability to make it had more to do with "my " end than the end of the ride. My backside was murdering me!!! MMmmmm I think I put that quite nicely actually... I should of said my arse was killing me but I didn't.!! But I did make it ...150km in 5hrs and then a 10km run. Will and I were exhausted when we got home. I felt so sorry for him as he had to work tonight and then get up early tomorrow (Sunday) and go to work again.. When I got home I just couldn't seem to stop eating and at one point just had to "walk away from the pantry".
Last session for the week was a 30km run. I knew the weather was to be cooler today than it had been for the past week with even the possibility of some rain , so wasn't too fussed in getting up too early. So I just didn't set my alarm and got up when I was ready . I am surprised with all the exercise I did yesterday at how poorly I slept last night. I must have woken up at least a dozen times. So as I said it was nice not to have to wake to a specific time this morning. Although a little slow to get myself motivated to go, off I left around 9.30 and headed north. About 6kms into the run, around Dome Mullaloo, I bumped into Anna who was heading south so I turned around and ran with her till just past Trigg. We didn't talk much but just running with someone who has the same agenda was nice. I left Anna at Trigg and just kept running till I hit that magic 30 number. My run was slow. Slower than I had hoped for but it the longest run I have done in ages so was happy to get thru it..

I forgot to weigh myself this week (mmmm..was that on purpose.. I wonder!!) .. but totals for this weeks training....
Swim..9kms..3hrs 20mins
Run....63.5kms....6hrs
Bike....317kms....11hrs 17mins
TOTAL of 20hrs and 27mins

Today I have been trying to follow the World Championships in Kona Hawaii. With my pathetic internet connection there was very little I could follow but I did find out that the Aussies dominated...Chris and Miranda ... you guys are amazing. And to all the age groupers who competed.. congratulations . Hope your dreams became a reality today.

To accomplish great things,

we must not only act,

but also dream;

not only plan,

but also believe.

Anatole France, 1844-1924

French writer and poet