Archives for March 2015

It starts with accepting you cannot be more or less than who you already are

OperationMove · March 30, 2015 · 2 Comments

Everyone runs for different reasons. It’s important to know what yours is. Me? I love to compete with myself. The thing I love about running is the thing I love about Crossfit. Talent levels vary greatly. Some things you are born with, some things you work for, but one thing is universal and that is that the work you put in determines the improvements you make.

That improvement based on work appeals to me. It’s not mysterious. It’s not remarkable. And all it takes is discipline and consistency. It appeals to me because I am like that. I am a fan of hard work. I think for the most part you are far better off working for what you want rather than coming up with ethereal inspirational quotes about what you would maybe like to do one day. I’m a pragmatist. So if something has to be done, it doesn’t matter if I feel like it or not, I still have to find a path from A to B. Some things you just have to woman up and do. It doesn’t matter if your kids are feral or you have a cold or you are going through a rough patch. In the end, people don’t remember your intentions, they remember what you actually did.

So what does that have to do with running? Well, there’s this myth that all running is supposed to be hard. And the truth is once you have a decent level of aerobic fitness it doesn’t have to be. You could do easy runs every day for the rest of your life. And sure, some would feel harder than others but for the most part it would be easy. The idea that it has to be hard is a myth. Significant improvement on the other hand that kind of does have to be hard. You kind of have to push that boundary between what you can do and what you think you can’t do to find out where the limit is. And then you have to push that limit to see how far it will go.

That’s why I run. To find out where the limit is. And then move it. Last year at Great Ocean Road when we ran the half marathon I saw pictures of people on a social run having an awesome time and pictures of me racing. You can tell I’m racing because I look like hell. And I saw that and thought I would have really loved to have been having a nice social run and not racing. Because speed isn’t everything. And it isn’t. Speed is nothing. And for awhile I thought that this year could be just a bit of a cruisey year. But it can’t. I will always enjoy social runs. They are fun. Way more fun than racing. But I can’t train that way. I’m incapable of it. At first it was ok. And then I got bored. And then I stopped enjoying my running. And then it really seemed like a chore.

The fact is that if I’m not pushing the boundaries of what I can do I lose myself a bit too much. It’s just not me. It’s not who I am. So I re-wrote my training plan and I’ve been doing that for two weeks.

Yesterday I had a great run. That hasn’t happened in a long while. It wasn’t my fastest run on that route, but it really was the so easy and so fun and it reminded me how far I’ve come.

People run for lots of reasons. I love writing training plans for people who want to have fun and variety in their running and for people who are aiming for a new distance and for people who want to enjoy their social runs and for people who have an ambitious goal. I really enjoy how everyone is different and everyone wants something different out of it.

Running is my art, my science and my therapy, but only if I’m working out where the boundaries of it are and figuring out which ones can be bent and which ones can be broken.

It doesn’t get easier, you just get better.

OperationMove · March 25, 2015 · Leave a Comment

I did the 15.5km Run for the Kids in Melbourne over the weekend and it was a day of firsts.

Two years ago, R4K was the first event I ever ran. I didn’t even keep my bib because I didn’t know then that that would become a thing for me.

It was deadset brutal. My longest run prior to that was 13kms and it really freakin’ HURT. It was another six months before I decided I might be able to complete a half marathon. Those additional 6kms seemed completely insurmountable.

But I did run a half later that year. In fact I ran three, and became a collector of bibs and medals in the process. It still shocks me that I haven’t received my breastfeeding medal, my homebirthing medal, my having four kids medals, my making the dinner every freaking night medals… so I appreciate the ones that I DO get.

Last year I corralled in the yellow zone with a group of OpMovers and as we approached the start line we shared hugs and kisses and then I was off. I went into that one with the goal of hitting a PB over the distance. I had run it in 1:48 that first year, and I wanted to come in under 1:30. I ducked and weaved and dodged and saw not much of anything in my efforts and I crossed the finish in 1:27. I was STOKED. It is a crowded run and I’d done exactly what I set out to do.

In the year since then my whole life has been turned upside down. My marriage ended. I ran a marathon. I moved house twice. I suffered what I guess might be referred to as a nervous breakdown in old school terms, I got help and started healing, I came home to where I did my growing up, I met an amazing man and I started a relationship that gives me more joy than I imagined possible.

So as I hit the corral on Sunday it was as a completely different person to the one who had run the past two years. So much has been lost in the time between, and so much gained.

This year I ran with my boyfriend and his mate. I had no time goal, I didn’t even take my earphones, I was just going to enjoy the run and check out the scenery. And that is exactly what I did. I loved running with the guys, who had me cracking up over a lot of the course. It was an easy, friendly banter that made the 15kms fly by and not once did I wish I had my music on. I loved being able to share the experience with my partner and it reminded why I vowed at the end of last year to never race by myself again… that what I love is RUNNING with other people and just loving the experience rather than fighting to hit a time goal all by myself. I can do that any old time, race days are for sharing for me.

I’m going to confess that it gave me some joy that I pretty much aced it in the comfortability stakes compared to the guys too. It isn’t often that I am the fittest in a particular field, and pulling up better than them was ace! In fairness I’m mid marathon training and a 15k for me right now isn’t a particularly challenging thing, but that in itself is so amazing because two years ago it nearly killed me. And I think I’ve convinced the guys to Run Melbourne with me later in the year and take it up to a half. I hope so, I reckon 21.1 with them would be awesome fun!

And in the meantime despite some of the epic challenges I’ve faced in the times between, I’m going to rest on my laurels a moment or two and let it sink in that what was once impossibly hard and painful is now something I can do not only with ease, but with complete and utter enjoyment. THAT is why you keep heading out the door. THAT is what makes the hard runs worthwhile… because all the time you are just getting better and better even if you don’t really notice it at the time.

Running has completely turned my life around, and I will never ever look back.

Sometimes it’s hard to be the anchor

OperationMove · March 16, 2015 · 3 Comments

I started blogging in 2009. Seems like a long time ago now. Riley was one. I blogged through her ICU stay and through about a year of trying to get pregnant again and all about little people becoming themselves. I blogged through depression. Deep, dark, never say it out loud depression but I could still write about how awful it was. Most people stopped reading then. 95% stopped reading then. Babies are so nice to read about, depression is ugly and boring and sad. But I kept writing. And then I didn’t. You could blame time and I certainly have in the past, but the truth is you always have time. I had two hours last night where I sat on the armchair watching Outlander and crocheting scarves. If I’d wanted to, I could have.

For awhile now, Kate and I have had an idea of having a personal blogging section in this space and I was excited by that but somehow there was always some kind of block stopping me from writing anything.

I think when you have a personal blog, there’s a sense of trust there that if you expose parts of yourself to people that it is safe to do so. And this seems more unknown, more risky, less safe. Years ago I was on a blogging panel and I was asked if I ever regretted anything I’ve hit publish on. I said no, without hesitation. And that if you have that moment were you pause over something, often it means that it’s really important. Or it could be really important to someone if you could just find the words for something that has been clattering around their heart without voice or meaning. If you could just say that out loud, it might stop clattering in all manner of other places. I think that’s what blogging is. Giving people the gift of words so they can be alone without being lonely.

Sometimes when I’m out running I still blog in my head. But I haven’t written it down in a long while. For awhile for me to hear the words has been enough. When you publish things you have to accept that once you hit publish the words don’t belong to you anymore, and I needed them to for a time and now I think I’m ready to let them go again.

A friend and someone I coach said to me the other week ‘sometimes it’s hard to be the anchor’. And I’ve thought on that for probably longer than she ever intended me to. It is true. Sometimes you have a great asset in my case I’d say that two of my best qualities are persistence and consistency – and after awhile you are so predictable in that – well what you do becomes unremarkable – even if you have to move heaven and earth to keep it going. A bit like how you don’t see the duck’s feet when it’s swimming – you just see it gliding across the water.

So I guess I’m going to take some of my own advice. Write my own story. Be my own greatest supporter. And let my words go.

Everyone starts at the beginning

OperationMove · March 2, 2015 · 6 Comments

I wrote this a couple of years ago, just after I was contacted by a journalist. She wanted to get in touch with 40-50 year old runners who had really come into their own recently even though they had probably always been a runner.

I was able to give her a few names of people I know but I said that she might struggle to find people who had always been runners. Because most people I know take it up in their thirties. Sometimes I wish I had found it earlier, but the truth is I had, I just lacked the discipline for it.

In my twenties I used to run 8km in the morning on a regular basis. I ran 8km because that was about what I could get through in an hour. I wasn’t consistent. I would run when I was on a weight loss kick and then when I didn’t need to lose weight I would stop running. Because I lacked consistency I never pushed through to where I could run something at an easy pace. It was always hard, all the time. But I did enjoy the hardness of it and I loved the feeling when it was done. But I never broke through that initial struggle that running is.

A big part of me liked it because it was on my own. I avoided physical activity of all kinds throughout school and university and adulthood. I was always picked last for sport. I didn’t have an athletic bone in my body. But I did walk a lot. I enjoyed being able to put my headphones in and imagine the world away. So going for a walk for an hour or two would not have been unusual for me.

One of the benefits of having been blogging since 2009 is that I can go back and read what I wrote. I don’t usually. I kind of like that it’s a moment in time and then I never read it again, EVER. But I was interested in going back and reading about the start of my running journey.

Once again it was motivated by weight loss, having just had Piper. And I was making an effort to eat better and exercise more. The first time I wrote about it, I was about 4 weeks in and I’d worked up to running for 650m and walking for 100m on the treadmill. I think I had started running about 300m to start with. Because anything more and I was dying of DEATH.

At that stage I was running for an hour and then stopping. So I guess this run I was averaging 8:04/km. And I just kept extending that run interval so a few days later, I ran a bit further.

Cracked the 8 minute barrier with 7:56/km. Always on the treadmill. I had zero interest in running outside because that seemed way too scary.

Gratuitous baby shot. This is how little she was when I started running

By October, I’d managed to build up to an hour of running without stopping.

And by March the following year I’d managed to run 12km, although I couldn’t imagine how anyone could ever run further than that.

Things continued like that for awhile. I’d go to the gym about 4 days a week, I’d run for an hour and that was it. But in November, having joined in with Operation Move, I decided to challenge myself and run outside. I’d only planned on 12, but I got a bit lost and ended up going a bit further.

And after that I avoided the treadmill wherever possible and started running outside.

At one point I had to retrain because of shin splints, but I kept going

But I got there, and I managed to train for a half marathon

It was brutally hard.

And then we did it again 3 weeks later.

At the end of that year I decided to train really hard and see what happened. I ran really long distances just to know that I could.

I pushed myself to run a whole lot faster than my comfort zone.

I entered races for shorter distances to get me focused on speed

I ran a lot of half-marathons.

Seriously, a lot.

And I even set a few goals that I thought I had no right to achieve.

Along the way, I got a whole lot faster.

And covered some big distances.

Some really big distances.

But you know what? After all of that I’m not as fast as I was six months ago. I’ve been running for coming up on four years now and setting PBs gets few and far between as you go along. And this year, I decided to just enjoy it and not work quite so hard.

It’s a journey, you have to love it. And sometimes that means smashing out goals and sometimes that means cruising along. And so now when I’m out running in the morning doing maybe my favourite distance (8km) and it’s not particularly fast and there are no PBs in sight, I get to enjoy that four years of work that I’ve put into it, because it’s easy. I broke through. With consistency and discipline I broke through that barrier so it can be easy. And I can love every part of it.