Week 1 – Wow! I can do it…
Week 2 – I am doing it!
Week 3 – I actually want to do it!
Week 4 – It’s a challenge, but I’ll do it.
Week 5 – Can I really do it?
Week 6 – It’s hard but I’m going to keep doing it.
Week 7 – Oh alright, I’ll do it.
Week 8 – I’m so close now it would be silly not to do it.
Week 9 – I can’t believe I’ve done it!
And now I’m going to keep doing it because I can and because I want to and because I actually enjoy doing it! Freaky, hey?
I’ve been exercising.
(wild hoots and riotous applause now please)
You may remember that in one of my bouts of motherhood amnesia, I vowed to do a sprint triathlon before the end of the year. Well, I am proud to say that motherhood won out over this rather absurd goal. The last event for the year is on in two weeks and I will not be anywhere near it. In fact, I wouldn’t be seen dead in a swimsuit yet, so that rules me out completely!
BUT
I have been exercising… the goal, a sprint triathlon at the end of February.
I’ve been pounding the pavement with my latest bandwagon (C 2 5k) and loving it despite my run of mishaps (don’t bother pardoning the pun). I’m mid-way through Week 5 and so far I have one misadventure on every single run. The latest have involved local wildlife (specifically rather persistent flies), domestic (though not domesticated) dogs enjoying the chase, wardrobe malfunctions (read: shorts creeping up my crack and causing nasty chafing between the thunder thighs), and an unfortunate case of stealing debris from a building site for my husband at the beginning of the run and having to carry it all the way. I’m a good woman, I am.
My only criticism of the podcast program is the atrocious song change in Week 4. I don’t know what you were playing at, Robert, but DJ just ain’t your thing. I thought there was something wrong with my machine, but no, the three tracks jostling for air space and creating a cacophonous noise for almost a minute just as I started my last run for the session was simply you trying to be cool. Newsflash: NOT COOL.
So, being past half way to a 5k Cliff Young shuffle with just enough bounce to get the ponytail swinging, I decided it was time to incorporate some riding into the mix.
Let me clarify here: Mr D loves me more when I exercise. Not because I’m sohotrightnow, nor is it the beetroot face and sweat moustache, but because I’m not such a snarky, downtrodden martyr when I exercise. So, having the unsettling capacity to see through me as he does, Mr D eliminated the last of my “Reasons Why I Can’t Possibly Go For A Ride Today” by buying me a new helmet for my birthday. Bugger.
“Riding”,for me, means getting on my bike and hanging on for dear life while feeling sure I am about to die of a heart attack any moment. I’m not what you might call a “confident” rider. No. Ok, so it terrifies me. There. I’ve said it.
But I got out there yesterday. Good for me. I rode 9k. Good for me. I figured that if swimming was all about getting into a breathing rhythm, and if the same seemed to be true for running, then I’d just do the same thing on the bike. Good for me.
I got the pedals going – breathe in one two, breathe out two three four, breathe in one two, breathe out two three four – I geared up and down to make sure I didn’t lose that rhythm and, LO! HARK! JOY TO THE WORLD! I had a great time doing it!
So, after a rest day today and a run tomorrow, I’m going all out: I’m going to do the 18k that I’ll have to do in the race. Bring it on. See how it goes. Who knows, I may be ripping up the road and pounding the pavement all in one session next week. Then we’ll really see who’s a tough little chicken!
And if, for some reason, motherhood wins out over this burgeoning triathlon career of mine, I will at least take solace in the fact that I now have three exercise options to keep the snarky martyr at bay. And that is a good thing. For everyone. Yes?
I’m not a bandwagon kind of girl. I just don’t like jumping on if the wagon is already crowded with people yipping and yaying about how great the ride is. That’s why I’ve only read one Harry Potter book (to placate my students, which didn’t really work because I told them what I thought of it) and it’s why I don’t do vampire romances, iPhones and doggy day spas (ok, maybe that last one is because I don’t have a dog yet, but even if I did and when I do, it won’t be going to no day spa!).
Yet, here I am, about to start week three of the Couch to 5k program, complete with podcasts. Why? Because of darned mummy bloggers yipping and yaying about the bestest way to burn the jubbly bits and get a bit of yee-ha into the psyche.
And bugger me if it really isn’t the best way to get rid of jubbly bits and instill a bit of yee-ha! It rocks my world (although this is not hard given the most thrilling me-time I have is a toilet break when both kids are asleep and I can purge without locking the Lion in with me lest he taste-test his sister’s forehead in my absence).
It’s the perfect exercise for someone with an out-of-control inner taskmaster like me. Yeah, you know the voice that says, “You’re not going fast enough! I don’t care if you think you’re having a heart attack, keep going you pussy! Stop? No way! Only soft, fat losers stop! If you’re not about to spew you’re wasting your time…” and all that jazz. It’s a voice that reigned supreme for a Very Long Time and it has not taken retirement terribly well. On occasions it can be heard shouting, “10pm?! You’re stopping the house work at 10pm?! Like Hell you are! Get that mop out, you pathetic excuse for a housekeeper…”.
So for me, the super calm voice that says, “It’s time for your first running interval… go,” and then, in no time, returns with, “OK, you can slow down to your brisk walking pace now,” is like a benevolent angel giving me permission to enjoy myself. Enjoyment, that is, provided I avoid the following:
1) Taking my regular (and I use this term in the loosest way possible) walking route only to realise that road works have rendered the sidewalk completely impassable. It forced me to tiptoe through the ankle-deep slurry and stones that passing cars hurtled at alarming speeds, yes, in the middle of the bloody road! And did I mention that it was a main road during the 5pm home-time rush? No?
2) Finding a new route to avoid being pole-axed by a semi, but realising that every single time the voice says to run on this new route, I am going sharply up-hill. I’m not fit enough for that shit yet! And did I mention the teeming rain in my eyes? I swear the natives thought I was in serious training for something a whole lot bigger than jubbly bits and yee-ha.
3) Searching for another new route only to find myself completely and hopelessly lost in suburbia. When the session ended I was still lost, finally resorted to jumping a fence, trespassing through a school, traversing a water-logged football oval and, upon reaching the main road (yes, there I was again!) it still took me 20 minutes to get home.
4) Accidentally pressing a button on my mp3 player mid-way through a session with no idea where I was up to and finding myself listening to Week 3’s track. I had to scroll back through the music, trying to guess roughly where I was up to all while walking briskly and slowly melting in the scorching sun. It took 5 minutes to find a sound that seemed vaguely familiar, but as it turned out, I was wrong and ended up repeating a whole lot of the session.
5) Grossly overestimating the capacity of my bra and how much The Blossom had had for breakfast. The juggernauts initiated a rather large let-down that positively shone through my purple t-shirt, dazzling the oncoming traffic (yes, I went back to main road highland dancing for fear of never making it out of suburbia – lucky drivers).
6) Rolling my ankle and swearing loudly (very loudly due to the false concept of volume you get when you have music blaring in your ears) in front of the husband and two young sons of a girl I am trying to groom for friendship. I have yet to hear what he reported when he got home, but I dare say my attempts to regain poise, dignity and charm were met with little approval:
“OH, HI CAPTAIN! (Yep, I couldn’t remember is name off-hand and ‘captain’ was the best my pathetic brain could muster. What happened to ‘mate’, ‘guys’ or just leaving it at ‘hi’?) JUST OUT FOR A RUN. (No shit, Sherlock) YOU BOYS GOING FOR A WALK THEN? (No, dip-shit, they’re sailing) WELL, BEST BE GOING… (God, let me die now)” Ah well, at least I finished week two.
So, with one mishap per run and still loving it, I am looking forward to the next installment of the C 2 5k bandwagon ride. Before you know it, I’ll be romancing vampires, tweeting from my iPhone and pampering my pooch. Look out world!
It’s Blog Floggin’ time with Lori’s Random Ramblings of a Stay At Home Mum!
As the title suggests, I went for a jog today. Actually, it was more like a Cliff Young shuffle interspersed with significant periods of walking, but at least I was out there.
In fact, the last three days have seen a level of dedication to physical fitness that I have not had in the 10 years since I retired from swimming… OK, except for the annual ‘I’m making a comeback’ fit that would take hold for a week or three every time a major international swimming event came up on the calendar. And no, it has nothing to do with the approaching Commonwealth Games. Seriously. I swear. Not even the tiniest whisper of a hint. Honest. I don’t want to make a comeback. Scout’s Honour.
(Not because I couldn’t do it, mind you. I mean the times they are swimming aren’t THAT much faster, especially since they’ve banned techno-doping with those Star-Trek ‘Beam me up Scotty’ suits. I could make a comeback, if I really wanted to. All it would take is a full-time nanny, housekeeper and live-in massage therapist, me to quit breastfeeding the Blossom and to forget about having any more kids for a few years, and the kind of monastic devotion to a masochistic training regime that would make SAS training look like a walk in the park, but I could do it. Seriously. What? You don’t think I could? You want me to prove it? I will. I’ll make that comeback, just say the word… Ahem… Sorry… Where was I? … OK, I don’t want to make a comeback and the Commonwealth Games are just another sporting event. Right.)
So, what has brought on my two bike rides and one ‘run’ in the last three days?
Firstly, my parents have been visiting so I have had babysitters. A luxury not to be sneezed at. An opportunity to be grasped.
Secondly, motherhood amnesia. Again. I know, a running theme with me.
This bout of amnesia has seen me commit to two rather daunting events requiring the kind of physical prowess I no longer possess – A 24hr MegaSwim to raise money for MS Australia (committed to when I was 3 months pregnant with Blossom and clearly delusional about how I was going to juggle two kids) and a Sprint Triathlon to be completed before the end of the year. I am, unfortunately a woman of my word an despite my efforts to learn the N-Word and my recent spate of withdrawing from a number of fun social engagements because of the kids, these two are proving hard to shake.
The MS MegaSwim has the obvious ‘good cause’ guilt attached, but thankfully it is a relay, so provided I get more than the current one member in my team (yes, that one member is me), we can all take turns. If I remain the only member, I may have to band in with someone else who is a whole lot more organised than I. At least it is a swim.
The other, however, has the personal challenge thing attached, and in this world of motherhood where competition is futile and generally heartbreaking (I mean, who wants to compete and then find that everyone else is a better mother and your children have the odds stacked against them already simply because of your ineptitude? It’s better to just not go there.) my natural need for a competitive outlet has latched onto this Sprint Triathlon mission. Only problem is, the end of the year is fast approaching and I have done three days of preparation.
So as I pounded the pavement (and I mean, every inch of the pavement, that’s how slow and arduous the shuffle was), I began to think how I might make this a more realistic goal. Because, if I am honest, three days of training during each of my parents’ monthly visits isn’t really going to cut it. Sure, whenever I mention that I’m going to do this thing people say, “Oh, you’ll shit it in. You can swim 400m with your eyes closed. Easy.” But they neglect to consider that it is called a TRI-athlon for a reason. If it only involved swimming 400m, I may well have committed to doing five of them back-to-back. But it does not, eyes closed or otherwise.
The problem for me is the land activity and, as I have discovered today, particularly the run. You see, on a bike there is a certain amount of inertia that helps you along. You can stop peddling and let gravity do it’s thing as you go down the hills. You can gear up or down to get the biggest bang for your pedal-power buck. But when running, it’s all up to you and those non-existent leg muscles that have withered and died from so many hours parked in front of the computer, blogging.
It was this on the final up-hill stumble towards home that I realised the solution was simple. They just had to change the order of events. If I could run first, ride second and swim third, I wouldn’t have to face the hardest part when I was already completely and utterly fucked.
So I have penned this letter to El Presidente of the International Triathlon Union and I will let you know when the new rules come into effect.
International Triathlon Union (ITU)
#221, 998 Harbourside Dr.,
North Vancouver, BC,
Canada, V7P 3T2
Dear El Presidente Marisol Casado,
I am a mother of two small children and aspiring Sprint Triathlete who has noticed a rather obvious flaw in the way your sport is run.
As I am sure you are aware, the current order in which the three sports making up a triathlon are programmed , namely swim, ride, run, leaves competitors facing the hardest event last. This is a rather unfair and unnecessarily masochistic approach. Your sport would have a much wider appeal (and I dare say records would tumble) if you were to change the order to run, ride, swim.
The new order will allow competitors to cane themselves in the run without fear of what is to come, ensuring faster times overall. The following ride would allow competitors to work the lactic acid build-up from their legs, while making the most of inertia and down-hill runs on the bike. Finally, the swim would provide the perfect cool down to ensure athletes did not injure themselves because of post-race stagnation brought on by the completely-shattered-can’t-move syndrome that currently affects many competitors in your sport. I mean, who doesn’t feel better after a dip?
While I understand that there are a number of unreasonably fit fanatics who enjoy partaking in triathlons like the Port Macquarie Ironman and other such ludicrous events, and who may appreciate the added challenge of running at the end of such an event, but for the majority of would-be competitors, this is a clear indication of elitism in the sport. We unfit mothers of the world would like to be given a chance and by changing the order of events you would be sending a clear message of inclusivity to the world.
I propose that these changes be made before the last Sunday of 2010 to ensure I have the best possible chance of achieving my Sprint Triathlon goal.
Thank you.
Your humble servant and sports visionary,
Nadine
PS: If you require a bribe, I would be happy to make a Lion Cake for you.
What's 'normal' anyway? 