Post Ironman Slothiness

Yes I am still alive.
I have had a nightmare of an insurance claim for a replacement laptop screen which resulted in me sending my laptop away to be fixed about 3 weeks ago and I am still waiting to get it back.  We do have another computer in the house but writing a blog on any computer other than my laptop seems rather foreign to me so I had been putting it off but we'll see how we go.

Riveting

So in my last post I had fulfilled by triathlon goal of finishing the Hawaii Ironman and had arrived back in NZ and back to reality. Boooooo.
Things have progressed slowly since then with a bit of S/B/R'ing which has built up to my usual amount mostly due to the fact that I am set to compete in the Taupo Half Ironman next weekend.  That kind of crept up on us and interfered with post Ironman slovenlyness.
I think I am in ok shape for Taupo but the problem is I am racing Elite (they offered me a free entry so I wasn't going to say no was I...) and don't want to embarrass myself.
The swimming and the biking is going ok but I forget that I had 6 weeks of no running before Ironman then two weeks of run/walk training leading up to the race followed by two weeks of no running and then I wondered why it felt so hideous when I got back into it.  Ummmm I think I was a bit unfit.  From about the 2nd km of my first long run (of 11km...) I felt like absolute poo and wanted to walk.  But I persereved and have made it up to 15km which will just have to do for Taupo.  And it has gotten a little more pleasant but is still very slow.  I found a new run buddy with my friend Annemarie from school days who has just moved up the road from us so hopefully we can do some running together which will be nice to have some female company in one aspect of my training.

Xterra cake for speedy Xterra people

My new workmates for a morning

Stroke and Stride has started for the season, the first race being a real shock to the system and was probably the first time I have run anything quicker than about a 4.50 for a km since August. The 5km run was about 2km too long for me but I still managed to pass a few people to come about 17th - long gone are the days when I used to come in the top 10 for these races.  Although I think it is a bit more competive these days with heaps of young kiddies who can swim and run fast.  The men's race was won by a 14 year old and I think Jared was rather pertubed by the number of young boys in front of him.
The second race was a bit more successful and I even managed to make it into the top 15 - wooo! The swim was really rough but I managed to come out closer to the people who usually waste me and even beat out a couple of people who I never swim faster than.  I was then locked in a battle with my little midget friend Pip for about 2.5km but she must have just been toying with me because all of a sudden she took off and left me in her wake.  She has been running 18.30's for 5km recently so I was pretty happy that I could keep up with her for a bit, I need to go back to O'Hagen's after Christmas and test out my 5km time.

Biking has progressed from a couple of half-assed midweek rides and something a bit longer in the weekend (but still pretty half-assed) to a few 4 hour Sunday rides and even some intervals.  I suddenly had a panic attack about 3 weeks ago about Taupo so decided I had better take things a bit more seriously since weekdays rides were frequently consisting of me not bothering to get up early and then just riding to the ferry for all of about 27 minutes of riding.
I don't have anything planned race-wise post-Taupo but hopefully I can keep continue this level of biking (maybe no need to ride for quite as long as 4 hours) afterwards to keep my fitness up.  I have been considering Auckland Half Ironman which always seems like a good idea at the time but not so fun when I am at the turnaround at Kaiua all alone and facing a nasty headwind, so I'm not rushing into that just yet.

So that's about it really. We have slowly been kitting out our new house in some styley furniture from Cintesi and I have also become a master fence painter.  I envision there will be a lot of fence painting happening this summer...

Check out those barstools

Before

During

After.  Oh la la