Katie's Story

Well, Lisa has been asking me to write a note for the blog for weeks now. Blogging ain't my thing. When it comes to talking - I can talk faster than most and about more random shit than most (the girls are up for a treat - we haven't yet trained together and I can ramble on for hours about really uninteresting stuff! Maybe I should save it all up for the actual event... - don't know anything about gardening though!).

So, I am the sole team member in New Zealand and I can tell you I am feeling the distance. I look at these blogs and see the emails from Lisa and worry about the fact that I am doing a FRACTION of the training my team mates are doing! So, event day hopefully I won't piss my team mates off with the random bullshit which comes out of my mouth along with the lack of performance coming from my legs!

We have a weekend date planned to train together in late July, a month out from the race. I am going over to Sydney and hope we can do some evenning/night walking during that time because, as yet, that's something I haven't managed to do. I am not that keen on walking or running in the bush in the dark by myself at night which I think is fair enough. Oh, actually, now that I think about it, I did venture into the bush once after dark. There was that time about 6 weeks ago when my sister in law, Tash, and I decided to go for a run through Ross Creek in Dunedin (I was down visiting for the night). Suffice it to say I've made a mental note: do not go into a bush track at dusk, with no night lighting, not particularly sure of the way and wearing a cap. Sorry Lise, Mia and Trace - you might be thinking at this time of swapping team mates!

So what I have been doing here in NZ by way of training is cutting my toenails real short (you wouldn't want long toenails during long runs - I've made that mistake before and lost many a toenail); changing my socks regularly (apparently that's important too); eating at regular intervals; keeping my fluids and carb levels up; trying to be very efficient in my movements (easier when you have a low centre of gravity like me); a bit of walking (taking the boys to school and kindy on the walking school bus each Wednesday); and a bit of running. I am hoping to pick up a bit of run fitness through osmosis too since Alan, my husband, recently completed the Comrades ultramarathon in South Africa. 89km in 7 hours 58. So by hanging out with him, I am sure I am building my stamina daily.

We are going to get a bit of a joint run in this weekend too - Lisa is going to be in New Zealand and we are going to have an early morning run in the bush in Wellington. Bet Lisa's forgotten just how cold it can be in Wellington in winter. At least we don't have spider and snakes though!