JANUARY 23 2013 Auckland Anniversary Day in 2011 was an incredibly boring Monday. My gym was closed, and due to what could be considered a mild case of OCD I find it very difficult to stray from a planned exercise routine. Out of nowhere, I wondered about going for a run. Unlike most runners, I
FEBRUARY 4 2013 A month into official Routeburn training and yesterday marked the first time I genuinely wished I could stay in bed instead of training. Don’t get me wrong, I often have thoughts about being anywhere-but-running – usually when I’m halfway up a hill of zigzags at 6:30 in the morning in the rain
11 FEBRUARY 2013 Here’s the thing about building up your mileage: naturally, it means that your long run is going to get longer. Which is fine in theory. It’s absolutely fine when you’re working everything out mathematically and writing on a calendar how long you’re going to run for on which day, which run is
19 FEBRUARY 2013 One of the greatest things about running, I think, is that everyone does it for a different reason. Most of my friends run. Some do it for fitness, simply because it’s one of the most efficient ways of doing weight-bearing cardio that you can possibly find. Some do it for the sake
FEBRUARY 25TH 2013 Nine weeks to go. When it’s nine weeks to count down until a holiday, things seem pretty far away – when it’s only nine weeks until a mountain race, somehow that number seems a little more pitiful. Not sure of the psychology of that. This was absolutely a week of stepping up
11 MARCH 2013 If there’s one thing the last couple of weeks have made clear, it’s that there’s nothing like Bear Grylls jumping around the Routeburn to make you realise a couple of things: without a doubt, we’re running the most spectacular part of the country in seven weeks, and it’s going to be tough.
MARCH 18 2013 Last week, as a trainer at my gym was taking me through a workout I can only assume was meant for Olympic athletes and mistakenly given to me, she casually mentioned that a friend of hers runs a half-marathon distance before work each day. I don’t know if that was a real
25 March 2013 When I decided to take on the Partners Life Dual, a half-marathon traverse of Motutapu and Rangitoto Islands, as part of my Routeburn training, I got two main pieces of advice – “the only time you’ll get in the Dual is a bad one,” from my chiropractor who has run it in
9 April 2013 Somehow, after a ridiculous number of days, hours, kilometres, however you want to measure the last few months, we’ve come crashing into April and race day is only three weeks away. Less than, actually. In two and a half weeks I’ll be bundling my extremely sleepy self onto a 7am flight to
16 APRIL 2013 Eleven days to go. It’s almost impossible to believe that there’s not even two weeks to go before race day. Four or five (depending on how I feel next week) runs left, and none of them difficult – in my dad’s words, anything after this Wednesday is too late to do anything