Category: Geek Girl Runner

Oh, and this article on the possibility of people using your Nike+ sensor to STALK YOU? Is ridiculous. I doubt many runners wear their running shoes everywhere. And besides, if you know their habits well enough to place sensors wherever they’re going to be, you might as well just follow them around. It’s pointless. Besides, I watch Veronica Mars and everybody can be tracked by their cell phones anyway.

It appears that running a marathon in two weeks may have been a little, uh, overambitious. I just can’t help it; I’m signed up for two separate Nike+ iPod challenges (one to run the farthest in a month; the other to run 50 miles in the 25 days up to Christmas) and my competitive urge has kicked in. Tuesday night I actually set a new personal best for the mile (10:24) but as I was climbing the hill from Sydney Uni’s No. 2 Oval, I felt a sudden stab in my hamstring. Again. Crap. I ended up walking the rest of the distance home. I guess I’ve been ramping up the distance too quickly. I decided to give it a rest on Wednesday and Thursday. I also started rubbing Voltaren on the muscle a few times a day (since I can’t take ibuprofen anymore) and I’ve taken a couple Epsom salt baths. I also saw a massage therapist Thursday afternoon who gave my legs a thoroughly painful going-over. Friday I felt cautiously optimistic enough to try a short run. I went for a two mile run around Vic Park and tried to concentrate on taking shorter strides and not killing myself. I also ran 90% of it on the grass, which I figured would help. I still felt some pain, but it wasn’t really the muscular strain of before. (I think it was just soreness from the massage.) Afterwards I went to GNC to pick up some Endura. It’s nast but I’m forcing myself to choke it down a couple times a day. Does anybody else have any suggestions to get me back on the road as quickly as possible?

Well, I did it! I officially ran a marathon… in two weeks. Since I got my Nike + iPod kit two weeks ago, I’ve logged 42.74km (that’s 26.55 miles) over eight runs, with a total elapsed time of 4’54:33. That’s not bad! Now all I have to do is do it all in one go. (HA.)

I’m having a hard time finding anybody to “challenge” on the Nike+ website. I’ve put my name down for a few of them on the forums, but so far I haven’t gotten any invitations. Do any of you guys want to go running (virtually) with me? On a related note, I logged my longest training run yet tonight: 6.65 kilometers. Woohoo!

Since I got the Nike + iPod kit last Saturday, I have officially logged 25.97km over five runs. Folks, that’s more than sixteen miles. I am in utter awe right now. My speed’s not great but that’s some serious distance for me. It’s amazing (and sad) how much more motivation I have now that someone is “keeping score.” Today was a rather short run with the Snook over through Sydney Uni. We ran down to the #2 Oval (ie the cricket pitch) and ran two laps inside the fence. On our second lap, I happened to look down and see a flash of orange. “HEY, IT’S TWENTY BUCKS!” I got way excited. That was my most rewarding run ever.

Thanks, Paula!
I went out for my third(!) run tonight with the Nike + iPod kit. I ran all the way down Harris Street through Pyrmont, then around under the ANZAC Bridge by the Sydney Fish Markets, and back up Wattle Street to home. It’s almost exactly 5K, which worked out pretty nicely. I’m still trying to build my fitness level up again so I wasn’t pushing too hard. I’ve set myself a goal of running twelve times in four weeks, so I’m going for frequency more than anything. Anyway, as I got back to the house tonight I hit the button to end the workout, and I was surprised to hear a strange British woman’s voice announce: “Hi, this is Paula Radcliffe. Congratulations on your new Personal Best time for the mile!” Sweeeeet. Granted, eleven minutes is pretty darn pokey by most of y’all’s standards, but it’s within sight of my ten minute goal!

I just found Hal Higdon‘s excellent running site. He’s got dozens of training plans on there, including this Novice Half-Marathon that looks pretty promising. The Sydney Half-Marathon is next May, which means we’ve got about seven months to train. He suggests that you can stretch the plan out by doing each week twice, which should work out pretty well. In the more immediate future, there’s an 8K Fun Run on Australia Day. (Didn’t I say we were done for the summer? Sheesh.)

Well, today was the day of the Ryde Aquatic Festival and the 10K Fun Run event in Gladesville. (We’d actually mistakenly thought the run was Saturday morning, so Friday night we’d carb-loaded and everything before we thought to check the entry form. Oops. Oh well; it was too hot to run Saturday anyway.) I’d like to start off by saying that AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I will NEVER run a race in a hilly residential area again. This was the hilliest run I’ve ever been on and it KILLED. Add in the fact that the crowd thinned pretty quickly – most of them were doing the 5K – and soon it was just me and the Snook and one old guy clambering up endless hill after hill of McMansions. I’d forgotten my pedometer and there was no signage announcing the distance, so we had no cue whatsoever about how far we had to go. I think I started to go a little mad. At one point the route crossed a park, and another section was along a trail through a little bit of woods, but mostly it was just endless suburbia. (At one point, I could swear that the damn course was a tesseract.) My goal had been to run the whole thing without walking, but the hills sapped my will to live pretty quickly. At roughly the halfway point – I have no way of knowing, really – I told the Snook to go on ahead. He was itching to pass the old guy but I didn’t have it in me. So I plodded on alone. About three years later (in my subjective mental time) the tesseract finally folded in on itself and the finish line came into view. I crossed at 71:34. Not the greatest time, but understandable considering the hills, I think. (The Snook finished in 67:09.) I finished eighth out of my age group though! (There were only ten of us.) And I think that’s probably it for the Sydney running season until the heat of summer is behind us. Maybe I’ll take up swimming…

While the Irish were getting spanked by the hated Wolverines back home, the Snook and I were engaged in our own grudge match with the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We were aiming for a time of 60 minutes for the 9K (based on our previous 8K time of 53 minutes). The race started in Milson’s Point at the little grassy park at the base of the bridge. You were supposed to “self-seed” so the Snook and I dutifully joined the crowd around the “60 minute” sign. The gun went off and everyone started inching towards the starting line. Unfortunately all the idiots who’d been in line at the Port-a-Potties just joined in wherever they could, which meant that once again we had to pick our way around walkers and strollers. (It’s getting to the point where a main source of my inspiration to get faster is my desire to get away from the goddamn walkers.) We headed up the street and turned onto the bridge exit ramp. And then suddenly there we were, heading up the middle of the bridge. I fulfilled a dream and deliberately ran in the “death” lane. (There are six lanes with no divider, just indicators that light up to tell you which ones are open in each direction. They change it depending on traffic. The middle one is the death lane.) More idiots were stopping in the middle of everything to take pictures of each other. WHATEVER. We were there to run, people! Then down around the Cahill Expressway above Circular Quay and then right onto Macquarie Street. Then it was all the way up the hill to the park, where we hung a left into the Domain. This part of the course was basically the same as the Mother’s Day Classic, so we knew what we were doing. We were checking our pace fairly frequently and we hit the 5K mark at 33:00. Not bad! That’s the point where I felt a stitch starting to threaten. The whole second half of the race ended up being an epic battle Kristy vs. Her Stitch. Back up to Macquarie Street and then a straight shot down to the Opera House. As we hit the 8K mark, I told the Snook to go ahead. I knew I could grimly hang onto the pace I was at, but I wasn’t really in any shape to be sprinting. Wincing and gasping for breath, I crossed the line at 58:20. The Snook probably finished around the 58:00 mark. BOOYAKASHA, BRIDGE! Then we headed up to the “Recovery Village” to turn in our timing chips. I have to say, the “post finish” services at this race SUCKED. Maybe it’s just because we finished in the middle; I don’t know. But it took us ages to inch our way through to the de-chipping area, and then ages more to locate the medal collection tent. People get really greedy and grabby post-race, and every tent where things were being handed out just turned into a complete melee. We got our medals; we got our free newspaper. We headed home. In Haymarket we stopped at Harry’s Cafe de Wheels for a much needed beef pie. Mmm, protein. Now we’re just in recovery mode. Man, I’m thirsty.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the most amazing part. WE RAN THE WHOLE THING. Well, I had to stagger up the last fifty feet of the last hill, but other than that, we actually ran more than FIVE MILES without stopping. I’m very proud of us!

This Sunday the Snook and I will be competing in our THIRD race together, the 9K Bridge Run. Can you believe it? And we’ve already started thinking about what our next event will be. This running thing has gotten a bit addictive. We’re not even that good at it! I found a great calendar at CoolRunning Australia and we’re having a look. I think this Sydney Summer Series sounds interesting. It’s a program of after-work events where you have to navigate various courses around the city. We can pretend we’re on The Amazing Race!

Anyway, Sunday. Yeah. Our original goal was to finish in an hour, and I’m hoping that’s still achievable. Unfortunately we’ve had a week and a half off due to my stomach, and we both put on a few kilos. (I’m hoping it’s just water weight.) We had a good run last night and I’m just looking forward to running down the middle of the Bridge on Sunday!