Sunday, September 22, 2013

City to Surf marathon 2013

About a month ago I ran the Perth City to Surf marathon. Its a tough marathon, with 21.1km of flat and then 21.1km of hills to finish on. Now before all you non-Perth-ites say, Perth's flat, I challenge you to come and run the course! Its tough and the hills are very challenging (and I like hills remember).

I generally had a pretty good race build up and I was feeling very confident.... until 2 weeks out a mystery virus hit me and I was out for the count... literally. For two days I did not get out of bed (which is very unlike me).  This shook me up a little but there was nothing I could do about it!

Here I am on race morning, its 5.30am, and I am looking a little nervous! Unfortunately we had to jog 2.5km from the assembly point to the race start! Not happy about that! I signed up for 42.2km not 44.7km hahaha!
I had a great first half, hitting all my targets, but then had a real low patch over the next 8 - 10km. Jason was supporting me on his bike and at one stage I wanted to push him off it, steal it, bike home, crawl into bed and forget all about the marathon. But as with all races these bad thoughts pass and soon I was back feeling strong and in control again.

Here I am after 30km and happy to be on my way out of Kings Park and on the home stretch!
I had a great last 12km, and was passing lots and lots of people. Its a nice feeling finishing strong and although the middle patch of my race meant that I wasn't going to achieve my time target I was really happy to have a strong finish.

Around 5km from the finish line a blister on my toe burst.... just as I started to think about it my coach popped up - talk about perfect timing! He gave me a pep talk and before I knew it I had forgotten all about the blister and was concentrating on the runner ahead of me.... who I caught about 200m later!

I managed to tick off km 37/38 and 39 in a very good times, but kms 40 and 41 were always going to be killers. Over these 2km you have to head over what is commonly known as the three sisters.... these hills are'n massive, or steep but they just keep on going and going and when you have been running over three hours and 40km they seem like mountains!!

At the top of the three sisters you can see the ocean and its all down hill from there! Here I am around 1km from the finish.....
I really picked up the speed over the last km or so (just to get it finished and this photo says a lot I think!
Finally, after 3 hours 24 minutes (and 4 mins slower than target time) I crossed the line (my GPS has the race distance as 42.5km so a 4.48 min/km average - not too bad for the course that it was).

Here I am over the line and still running hahaha! I think I was worried that if I stopped I would seize up and not be able to move! If you blow the photo up you can see Jason in the crowd just under the time clock on the right hand side of the photo, he is wearing a bike helmet.
Once I finished the race and found Jason I started cramping up a bit and I was getting cold so Jason rode the bike home and I caught the shuttle bus back to town then had to walk 2km back to the start for the car! By this stage I was really cold, shivering and tired! I just really wanted to be home!

All in all it was a good day! I am pleased that I pushed through the mental demons in the middle of the race and its always a massive achievement finishing a marathon! I was very lucky to have Jason on bike support, which was made possible with Jason's parents being here to look after Ethan! Otherwise it would have been a very lonely day out there all on my own!

Saturday, September 21, 2013

What's been happening over West!

Firstly apologies for the long hiatus in posts! Life just got in the way for a few weeks! With daycare, work, running a marathon (I'll post about that later), Ethan having a bit of a bad run with illness again, my work in the midst of a merger, Jason's parents visiting and more I just haven't had the time to sit down and write a post!

So its going to be a bit hard to write about everything that has happened in the past 6 or so weeks so I thought that I would just give you a pictorial update on a few comings and goings!!

We bought Ethan and tent.... and I regretted it very soon after, cos all we got for weeks on end was "play in the tent, mumma play in the tent, Daddy play in the tent"... unfortunately the tent is broken now. Here are some photos of Jason and Ethan watching a movie in the tent... as you can see Jason is really happy to be there!
Ethan really has changed a lot in the last few weeks! He is looking and acting very grown up! 
While Jason's parents were here we all went out to visit the cuddly animal farm! Ethan had a ball, he got to feed the goat and ride a horse!
And play in puddles afterwards (which I think he liked more hahaha).
Ethan really enjoyed having his Gunma and Nandad here! They spent heaps of time at the beach and at various parks around the place (we had a glorious weather week while they were here).

Unfortunately, we have has some very rainy days since which has called for some arts and crafts, which Ethan is enjoying more and more!
A couple of weeks back we got Ethan a new bike... and despite the warnings that this isn't a stunt bike, I fear that is exactly what Ethan sees it as! Uh oh.... how long till our first A&E visit I wonder???
Ethan gets very attached to things! We got him an umbrella, and now it has to go with us everywhere (unless we are clever enough to hide it!). Ethan has also worked out that he can reach the fish food by dragging the chair around the place, I have to be very vigilant to make sure he doesn't feed the fish every 30 min or so! Finally, Ethan has decided that custard scrolls with icing and desiccated coconut are his bakers delight food of choice now (it used to be the cheesymite scroll!)...
A few weekends ago we were reminded how quickly kids can go downhill... here's Ethan just before lunch - climbing his first tree (with a little support from Dad).....
Two hours later we were at the supermarket and he had power chucked over Jason, he had a temperature of 39+ and he was going down hill rapidly....After 3-4 more spews (and vomiting up any pain relief we could give him) we skyped his Grandma for a trans-tasman triage assessment. Given how lethargic Ethan was, his little grunts and his general demeanor we all decided it was best that we take him to the hospital....

As we walked into emergency, Ethan vomited all over me (I didn't think to bring spare clothes for myself either) and he was burning up! It was a pretty busy night at the emergency department, but we got to see someone about 90 minutes later....

Its hard to explain that Ethan is usually a "happy sick" kid, so it was his lethargy that was the most worrying! Here he is at hospital!
After a good check up, we got the annoying diagnosis of "probably something viral".... given he hadn't kept any pain relief down they gave him a suppository, which helped a fair bit and then we were on our way home again! No answers and still a very unwell and unhappy boy on our hands!

He is slowly coming right, onto his 15th day of anti biotics now, so fingers crossed that's the last of the winter sickness for us!

Well that's Ethan's last 6 odd weeks in a nut shell... I'll try to be better at posting over the coming weeks!