A race lost

Saturday, December 29, 2007

I don't usually blog about personal stuff. However I write with profound sadness that my step father and great mate lost his battle with cancer last night.


Baz, was diagnosed with cancer around C2S 2006 at age 60 after finding a lump on his bicep. It turned out that the lump was a secondary tumor with the prime being on his lung and adrenal gland.


He was a fighter and showed the small world around him how the power of positive thoughts can assist in the fight. He was only given a few months to live back then yet fought a great bout to stick it out for this long.


The last month or so was very hard for him. It broke my heart to see him lose the ability to walk more than a few feet and live with the chronic pain. Even the round the clock doses of morphine could not take the edge off his pain as it had recently spread into his bones and liver.


In a show of true guts and determination he made the short trip with Mum from their house in Double Bay to see the kids and the rest of his extended family on Xmas Day. It may have only been for 20 mins or so but I could see that it meant everything to him - and everything to us.


I was with him and Mum when he died at 4.00am. I am glad that he went quietly at home and that the pain is now stopped.


He was a great man and taught me about hard work, love and single minded determination. His never give up attitude will stay with me forever.


We will sure miss him.

Not drowning, waving.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Time flies when your flat out. Since I've got back from the CC1/2M, I hit the ground running on the Monday and have been so immersed with work that I've not had any spare time for myself. That means no running.


Being self employed might have it's benefits, however when the buck starts and finishes with your good self and Xmas deadlines beckon, then you have no alternative but to work your little butt off until the clients are all happy. Hence why I've not had a day off since then and have worked 15 days straight so far and it looks like that situation won't change until right up to Xmas eve.


Still, I'm a glass half full kinda guy and figure that the running gods felt that time was needed off the road to prepare me for my Canberra Marathon campaign which is due to commence, er soon.


In the meantime I've bought myself a Garmin Forerunner 50 which comes with a footpod and a HRM. It's only just been released and arrived from the USA today. I toyed with the idea of getting a Garmin 205/305 but my experience with the Timex Bodylink GPS and satellite dropouts in the city etc left a bad taste in my mouth. Reviews of this new gadget suggest that the footpod is up to 98% accurate which is way good enough for me. It also will talk with my notebook via a wireless USB dongle, so I can play with the software that comes with it. :) The Heart Rate Monitor is a new thing for me and I'll have to read up on all that. Not that this old man will be doing any lactic threshold training or anything. ;-)


I'll be taking The Bride and the Tin Lids up to Port Stephens after Xmas for a spell and hope to get a whole bunch of nice runs in up there. I hope everyone has a very merry Xmas & Happy New Year and will catch you all around the traps no doubt.

Central Coast 1/2M

Monday, December 03, 2007
21.1km | 112:XX | Race

After nearly being washed off the Freeway driving up on Saturday, we were greeted with a sunny Sunday morning at The Entrance.


There was a whole heap of CoolRunners up there and it was good to catch up. Soon the talk was over and we were off around the lake. You know as much as I love this race, what really pisses me off is the lack KM markers along the way. Seriously, I had no idea how I was going and tried not to get swept away with the faster runners. Of course that wasn't to be and I arrived at the turn around (10 point something KMs)in around 52:XX.


I popped a gel (Strawberry + bananna GU - YUK!) and tried to maintain my pace. But soon the heat was getting to me. At each of the 3 drink stations I took two cups, one to drink and the other over my head, but things didn't really improve much. In the end with about 6km to go I had slowed down to a plod and was content that I would crack 2 hours OK as long as I didn't die too much from there.


CR Cliffold caught up with me with about 5km to go and I think I upped the pace a bit to keep with him. It was good to chat about crap to get my mind off things and we both ran together from there to the finish line.


All things considered, I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out and have only a little DOMS and certainly no niggles to report. All good.