I was told by a colleague at work, in a tone that I can best describe as stern, that I had not updated my blog since before Christmas. At the time, I responded speedily that there was a simple reason for this - I injured myself at Christmas. Literally, on Christmas day as it happened. However, the truth is that much has happened since I was admonished by Naomi, who for ease of identification I will dub "Naomi the Rock". (I realise, having done a bit of back-reading that I also dubbed another colleague "Jonathan the Rock". As they are both geologists, I shall ask them for some qualification, perhaps on their favourite sort. Although this might make Naomi "Naomi the Connemara marble" which loses some of the ring) And I certainly haven't kept you up to date. I'll try and recap on what you've missed.
Well, the injury, please don't try to examine what that was, I have no idea, I can only tell you that it was not running-related. I cycled some 5 miles to my sister's house, in order to get properly excited about my new saddle (on which, more later), and my leg massively hurt the next day. It might have been the ride; it might equally have been spending time with my nephews and nieces. I have no idea why, but it kept it up for about 2 months. It was something in the tendony bit in my calf, on my left leg, just below the knee. I can't elucidate any further. The importance of mentioning it, other than a pathetic excuse as to why blogging ground to (yet another) halt, was that it was instrumental in my deciding to not enter the Lanzarote Iron Man. Now, the astute among you will recall the excitement that coursed through my veins when I met an Ironman on the Chester marathon (including divulging things that I really shouldn't) and he persuaded me that it was, in fact, possible for me to accomplish the impossible.
Hilariously, people used to say "you'll be running triathlons next", which I presume they did because they couldn't see the difference between an ultra marathon and a triathlon. I could, and I used to give them my most withering looks, while rolling my eyeballs into a not-too-distant county, and say "No. I will not". Anyway, Chester Iron-man person inspired me that perhaps I could. I shared this thought with a friend, and she said "Why would you do that?" which is a fair question. The answer was not dissimilar to why I want to do a PhD, which is so I could be called Dr. Anyway, I told her that if I had done an ironman I could stamp around going "I - AM - IR-ON-MAN DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH DUH". Or something. I'm not sure she entirely agreed that it was a valid reason.
The point is, I couldn't. I had an injury, and I realised in any case that I only had 5 months to train, which wasn't really long enough anyway. So, I dropped out. The inspiration behind Lanzarote was yet another of Sally's friends, Leeky, who does a lot of crazy stuff and is very enthusiastic about it. He is another bloke I am now friends with on Ye Olde Book of Face. I'm kind of OK with the strangers/friends thing on Facebook now. It's been fun, and I've met some really cool people. Leeky concurred that it was the right choice to not do Lanzarote if I couldn't get on with training, and I was filled with relief. Not only was it an immense challenge (2.4 mile swim, 115 mile cycle and 26.2 mile run), it would have involved shipping my bike to Lanzarote, AND running in heat, which I think we've already established, I don't really enjoy. I don't know if I enjoy cycling in heat, because so far, I haven't really enjoyed cycling, but I can't imagine that heat would improve the experience. Anyway, there I was, pretty much drenched with relief, when Leeky followed up the chat... "Why not do a half IM first? I'm doing one in Holkham in July".
Now, I should know better. I really should. But all I can tell you is that the relief I was feeling in not having to do an Ironman, which I had been perseverating about for the previous 2 months, was palpable. I signed up to the Holkham Outlaw there and then, and I did so with enormous relief, which lasted for several weeks, if not months. I even figured that it all made sense - I had the Connemara marathon, deferred from last year, in April, and a race in Sweden in September. The training for the marathon would surely kick it off nicely. It was in Norfolk - not Lanzarote - and even though my faithful running friends had promised to come to Lanzarote and support me, always providing that they didn't have to do it, I felt that Norfolk was going to be a lot less stressful.
Some of you might say I'm not a girl who does things by halves, but really, you'd be quite wrong. A half ironman is a half.
