Advance to Australia Fair...

Hello Everyone
I went for  a swim in the lake yesterday.  It   was pure madness.  Cold.  Rough. Stirred up.  I crashed and bashed around for 18 minutes.  And then I got out.

Today I packed my bike.  No.  I watched while it was packed for me.  My spatial perception couldn't have managed that feat without prior education.  I just hope I am going to be able to unpack it and put it all back together. In an appropriate arrangement, not just my usual "anything goes" type of approach.

I am starting to get everything washed and dried and ready to go.  I have washed and scrubbed the soles of my running shoes and my cycling shoes.  I  also washed and scrubbed my beautiful bike before it went all Transformer and tucked itself into a tardis disguised as a cardboard box.  I hope the Aussies are nice to me and don't demand too much unpacking in Customs.

I don't feel fit.  I feel sleepy and low.  But I think I don't have any benchmarks - prior to March 3rd I had been doing lots of events, but I haven't done any since, so I really feel like I am taking a leap into the unknown.  And by unknown I don't just mean New South Wales (can you get Marmite there?).

OK, well, this will be my last post from Aotearoa.  Next stop West Island via Vegas (that's RotoVegas obviously).

Until next time, remain open minded about going commando.
love
Ironmaiden

Reality Check

Far out!  Time goes fast.  It is now only eleven sleeps until I go to Australia to knock the bastard off.  Not Australia I mean, just the Australian Ironman.  I'll leave Australia just as I found it.  Well mostly anyway. I'll try not to cause too much carnage. 

It doesn't seem that real.  I have been trying to get prepared - I have bought flights, got accommodation, figured out how to get from Sydney to Port Macquarie.  Figured out how to get to Sydney.  I have some of those odd Australian dollars. I even got travel insurance.  I also got travel insurance for my beautiful bike.  My beautiful bike cost more to insure than I did.  The travel insurance people value me less than a low-mid range carbon fibre endurance geometry bicycle.  It doesn't even have an engine.   I wonder what they know that I don't know yet?

But I have so many questions!  Will there be cane toads all over the road?  What happens if you hit a cane toad on a low-mid range carbon fibre endurance geometry bicycle?  Will there be sharks and crocodiles?   Will there be snakes?  Do they all cancel each other out?  I mean, the sharks will be busy fighting the crocodiles and the toads will be fighting the snakes and I can slip by unnoticed?  What if they hear me wheezy shuffling?  Should I have developed stealth-mode?   How do you wheeze stealthily?

Are there hills?  Are there hills anywhere in Australia?  Will the water be cold?  Will it be warm?  Will the Australians be mean to me because I am not a freakish over achiever?

Great.  Well, the t-11th sleep promises to be a restful one....

Till next week, don't worry about things you can't change or influence!
love
Ironmaiden

Dogs and shoes...

What is it with shoes?  I keep spotting shoes in weird places.  Always a single shoe, on its own.  I see them out cycling, in the grassy verge MILES from any driveways or houses.  I see them on the bottom of the lake - out really deep, just one shoe on its own, then further own, a completely different shoe, all on its own. 

Are these shoes getting their by their own free will? Are shoes by nature solitary characters?  When we force them to hang out in pairs are we actually damaging their delicate sensibilities?  Or, and I must admit, this seems a bit more likely, are the shoes there because they have been put there by people?  If this is the case, who does that?  Who tosses a shoe (just one!) out the car window, or over the side of the boat?  If you do, what do you then do with the other shoe?  Who has a use for just one shoe?   Well, apart from one-legged people.  Is there a strong correlation between being one-legged and having a tendency to litter? With footwear?

I got chased by a dog the other night.  It wasn't too serious, I was shuffling by wheezily, and it was inside a fence.  I was a little perturbed to here its owner call it off, saying "Leave her alone, she ain't got no wallet". 

OK, well until next week, make sure you don't have any wallet-sized bulges in your running shorts, it will protect you from dogs!

love
Ironmaiden

You think I'm mad?

Well, you are right, I am sure I am.  But not as mad as three blokes I met out riding on Saturday.  They had just finished the Rotorua-Taupo 100km flyer, and were riding home.  To Tauranga.  Having ridden to the start line.  For a warm up.  Yeaup. Cos how hard can that be?  No wonder they snuck up behind me and sat in my draft for a few kms.  When I discovered them there and accused them they said "Don't worry about the slow pace, any drafting is good after the distance we've done so far"...hmph... fairly thinly veiled insult there fellas...not to mention the unsaid comment on my ability to separate a head wind.  You know why.  And I am good at it, but I don't like to be reminded of the underlying reason.

Additionally after all my efforts to plaster a dogged (if false) smile across my countenance when on long runs, a friend who saw me yesterday reports that I definitely have the Orc-look back in style.  Apparently I looked to be hating it.  I wasn't, but I was negotiating a footpath deep in high-speed waterskiiers, dogs, small children, bikes and bogans.  So chances are it was just my "concentrating and slightly concerned" face.

It is now less than five weeks until Ironman.  I have a strange sense of de ja vue.  Like I've been here before.  I officially entered IM Australia tonight - money paid, emergency contact details provided.  My flights are booked and paid for (because why wouldn't I go to a whole different country to do a race I could do in my home town?).  All that remains is accommodation, transport, and figuring out how on earth to travel with my favourite hunk of carbon fibre. How hard can it be?

Until next week, tie me kangaroo down, sport,
love
Ironmaiden

Phwoah...getting back on the wagon is a wee bit hard.

Well, I am still on the edge of my seat waiting for confirmation that I have got a spot at Port Macquaire.  I think I have, but until I have signed on the bottom line (and parted with a decent chunk of change) I won't feel confident enough to book flights.

In the meantime, I've been trying to get back into training, but I've fallen off the wagon a  little bit so I feel like I am trying to catch back up to the stupid wagon.  I spent Saturday traipsing round the town following a green dinosaur, Susan Boyle, God, Jesus, assorted devils, four pirates and a handful of sailors.  So that counts as training right?  My liver certainly got a workout, and it is still suffering.  And like my feline companions, I am chubbing up for winter, not ideal for peaking for an endurance event.

But Port Macquarie is not far away, so I can't keep making excuses, basically time to rediscover my good habits and love of training.

Fingers crossed, hopefully IM Australia will have some good news for me on Friday!

Until next week, don't drink anything served out of a plastic 10 litre bucket.  Honestly.  Don't do it.
love
Ironmaiden

It's on!

Right!  Plans are afoot.  IMNZ emailed today - they have some entries to pretty much all the Ironman races between now and the end of June.  I just need to chose, get a spot, organise finance, flights, accommodation and logistics, get time off, find a house sitter and train.  How hard can that be?

These are my choices:

Ironman South Africa – April 22, 2012;
Ironman St. George – May 5, 2012;
Ironman Australia – May 6, 2012;
Ironman Texas – May 19, 2012;
Ironman Cairns – June 3, 2012;
Ironman Regensburg – June 17, 2012;
Ironman France – June 24, 2012;
Ironman Coeur d’Alene – June 24, 2012;

My heart is telling me Nice (France) or Coeur d'Alene (which is in Idaho), but my head is telling me Australia (Port Macquarie) would be a much less complicated and expensive exercise.  Speaking of exercise, I haven't been getting much lately but my coach seems to think it is OK to ease back into it and you know I like to do what I am told.

There are only limited entries to each race so I will be competing with at least 400 frustrated Australians, but fingers crossed, and Idaho or France are not so bad as far as back-up plans go.

So it is a bit more "watch this space", but I promise anticipation is delicious!

Until next week, give way to your right!  After next week, all bets are off and don't be on the road at the same time as me.

love
Ironmaiden

Best laid plans and all that...

Well.  It is now the 7th of March and I am not an Ironmatron.  Or an Ironman.  Or an Iron anything really.  Ironman New Zealand 2012  was postponed and shortened to a 70.3 distance race.  How did I feel after training for a year only to be told I wasn't going to lose my Ironmaidenhood?  Freakin excited that's how!  Why?  Lots of reasons!  I didn't have to go out and ride my bike in a raging headwind (we like that), I wouldn't have to worry about my friends and family battling to be volunteers and supporters in what was being billed as "a storm of the likes we have never seen before", and more importantly, because of my lightbulb realisation that Ironmaiden 2012 was still going to happen, she was just going to take the campaign on tour!

In fact, the only real disappointment of the weekend was that The Storm never really got to Taupo - the wind certainly came and in its own right was a show stopper, but I wanted the drama and thrill of The Storm.  But a minor detail.

So stay tuned for Ironmaiden to take a whole new direction: Ironmaiden International

But more of that later.  There was a race on the weekend.  So a 70.3 is a half-iron distance. Having already done one this length I could go in a lot more confident than I would have gone into the full.  I think a lot of us pushed too hard, but I lived to tell the tale and even went a few minutes faster than I did in December.

Not without calamities of course.  As if I could spend 7+ hours doing anything and not have some calamitous episodes....

• On the bike - I was riding along, day dreaming about travelling to France to do an Ironman...and I strayed off course, almost into the grass.  I over corrected and then over-over corrected (I really am not good at driving those aerobars) and before I knew it I was sure my wheels were heading off in two different directions.  Miraculously I recovered, and then as the relief wore off, I did a quick glance around to check no one saw.  Unfortunately, a man cycled up beside me shortly after and said "Wow, you nearly took a tumble back there!"  Dammit...I tried to swear him to secrecy, but he wouldn't have a bar of it.

Still smiling after 90kms

• In the run - the run went pretty well until the last 500 metres or so.  I had turned into the main street, right in front of the pub where all the cheerful people were watching the less cheerful runners...only to get cramp in my right hamstring.  A massive cramp.  A "turn my leg into a jointless wooden post dangling from my hip" cramp.  I did a big "Craig Barrett about to collapse at the Olympics stagger" and grabbed the railing.  Cue shocked gasp from crowd. I couldn't get the damn leg to work, I clung to the railings, begged a stranger for help, and all I could think was that I wasn't allowed to crawl, bum shuffle, or drag myself to the finish line with my lips!  Stupid international Ironman rules!  But then I realised, I could walk backwards!  I fooled my hamstring into thinking I wouldn't need it anymore!  So I walked backwards through the main street of town.  Cue smartarsed comments from crowd.  I got to the last aid station, gulped back half a cup of Coke, inadvertently splashed coke all over the poor volunteers shoes as I discarded the half empty cup in the wrong place, then turned around and ran!  Forwards!  Cue delighted applause from crowd.

I still got a towel, a t-shirt and a medal.  Truth is in the eye of the towel holder right?

So I finished.  I was sore!  But  on a whole a good day.  It was great seeing so many people out supporting.  And now I have a trip to plan and an Ironman to knock over!

Till next week, go google "serendipity", and you'll understand how I am feeling.

love
Ironmaiden