The City 2 Surf

Today I completed my very first City 2 Surf – a 14km fun run from the Sydney CBD to Bondi Beach.  My preparation for this event was marred by injury, first I developed tendinitis in my right foot which was closely followed by an inflamed Achilles tendon.  Therefore, I did almost no training for this event and had planned to basically walk the course and take photos.  However, the urge to run took over so I did a mixture of running and walking and completed the course in about 2 hours 15 minutes.  I am not sure what my official time was as I didn’t take any notice of what time I crossed the start line, so I will have to wait until the official results are released later on this week.

My legs are extremely sore, especially my hamstrings, but my feet (at this stage) feel pretty good.  After the race, Lela and I headed to the Bavarian Bier Cafe for a schnitzel which made a really good post race meal.  On arriving home, I had a hot bath which I honestly think was the best part of the race.

Whilst I did run part of the course, I still manage to get some good photos, which can be seen here.  However, this is my favourite one.

The race had over 75,000 participants this year.  I couldn’t get over just how many people there were and yet there was still space to do some good sprints along the course.

Did anyone else do the City 2 Surf this year?  If so, how did you go?  Also, how long were you waiting in that queue for a bus back to the City?  Were you waiting longer than it took you to do the course?

Big Thank You

I just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who congratulated me on my win at AMAC.  All your wonderful comments mean a great deal to me.  I am so lucky to have such wonderful friends – yes all of you who read my blog, but who I have not met in the real world are considered my friends too. :)

Thank you!

Competing At AMAC

If you told me at the beginning of the year that today I would be competing in my first martial arts tournament, I would have laughed at you.  I would have told you that there was no way I could even do martial arts, let alone compete in a tournament.  But today, I headed out to Lidcombe along with 5 other members from my Kung Fu club to compete in the Australian Martial Arts Championships (AMAC) NSW Round 4 comp.

Originally I was only going to compete in the Adult Beginners’ Traditional Hard Form but on Friday, two days before the comp, my Sifu called me and asked me to register for the Female Beginners’ Point Sparring competition as well.  Sparring is something that I am really not good at, but my Sifu talked me into it and I thought I might as well give it a shot.

My first event was the Adult Traditional Hard Form and they decided to put Beginners and Intermediate together, both male and female.  There was 5 of us in this event – 2 girls and 3 guys, including one of the guys, Ant from my club.  I was first up which was a good thing, otherwise I would have just sat there and got nervous.  I decided just to go out there and have fun.

Me doing Kata I

I honestly can not remember what scores I got from any of the three judges, I think one of them was an 8.4, I was just so glad it was over and I hadn’t lost my balance or made a fool of myself.  The guy that followed me did an excellent job and I thought he had beaten me for sure.  Ant also did a great job as did the other female competitor.  Then the results were read out; Ant got third place, the guy following me got second… and I got first!!  I honestly couldn’t believe it, in fact I still can’t believe it.

Ant and I with our trophies

My Sifu said that if I did my kata well I had a very good chance of winning an ugly looking trophy – and she was right.  Note to self, never doubt my Sifu.

You might notice that I am wearing a yellow belt, when I actually have a brown belt, this is because this tournament is a mixed martial arts comp and in most martial arts brown belt comes just before black wherein our Kung Fu club brown is your first, therefore, we compete wearing a yellow belt.

Then it came time for sparring and again they put beginners and intermediate together, which meant I was up against two other girls Sarah and Arko from my club who are a grade above me.  I was also against the other girl from Traditional Forms and it was her I faced off against in my first match.  She was really, really good but surprisingly I only lost the match by one point (5-4).  My second match was against Arko and she kicked my ass 6-4.  However, despite losing both my matches, I really enjoyed competing in sparring.  It was so much fun.

In my sparring gear waiting for the judges' decision

Check out those sexy gold hand and feet guards and how lovely that mouth guard makes me look.  I seriously look like I have the worst buck teeth ever. Sparring gear is not designed to make you look good.

After both of my events were over, I had a well deserved lunch as by this time it was about 1:30pm and I spent the rest of the afternoon watching my fellow club members compete in their events before heading home around 4:30pm.

My legs are sore and stiff and I am absolutely exhausted, but I had a great time.  I also now have an ugly trophy on my mantelpiece which I am extremely proud of.

Stating The Obvious

This article just appeared on SMH about the “startlingly” fact that ice coffee drinks contain a lot of calories.

Now look at this drink and tell me would anyone honestly think that this drink is healthy??

Look at the amount of cream for starters – and yet SMH think that we don’t know that this drink is a “diet hazard”.

Now it is horrible to think that a drink could contain 400 calories which is a 1/4 of the calories a woman should consume a day, but is it really news that drinking one of these drinks a day will cause you to gain weight?  An article to fill under bloody obvious along with the City 2 Surf training guide that states that eating 2 scoops of ice cream a day can cause you to gain 3.6 kg a year.  Who the hell eats 2 scoops of ice cream a day and truly believes that they are eating a healthy diet?

I really wish that the mainstream media would stop talking down to us.  We know what foods are not good for us, we know that eating this junk is large quantities will cause us to gain weight, it isn’t news.

Oh…crap

Somehow at training tonight my Sifu (instructor) managed to talk me into going in a tourament next Sunday.  I know I need to start going into touraments to get competition experience, but I wasn’t quite expecting to start this soon and to have only 10 days to prepare.  I am only competing in Forms, so I am not doing sparing or any weapon work and I will be doing Kata I which I did at my grading, but still… yikes!  I am totally unprepared.

It just so happened that the only people that turned up to training tonight were the ones competing next Sunday so after doing about 15 minutes of sparing, during which I scored my first ever point in a mock competition, we worked on our Forms.  It is amazing just how exhausted you get from doing Forms.  They don’t seem like much but it is almost impossible to do more than 3 complete routines in a row without needing to take a break.  I am hoping at the tourament that I can just get through my routine without stuffing up and looking like a total idiot.  Now to start practicing Kata I like crazy to get it up to scratch.

Out Injured… Again

I think I have broken the world record of the fastest time someone can re-injure themselves – 24 hours.  My tendinitis in my right foot had resolved itself and was feeling great, so on Monday night I went, armed with some great running songs, for a 5km run.  My foot felt fantastic afterwards and I was pumped.  The next day my legs were feeling kinda sore, but nothing major, just the “you have not used these muscles for a while” soreness.  Then around lunchtime my right heel felt like I had rubbed the skin off the back of it.  I paid little attention to it and headed off to Kung Fu for my usual Tuesday night class.  When I took my shoes off to train, I fully expected to see some impressive raw skin, but there wasn’t a mark.  After training was when the pain really kicked in.  It hurt to walk, it hurt to go up on tippy toes and I invented some brand new swear words when coming down off tippy toes.  Some googling and self diagnosis later, I came to the realisation that I have strained my Achilles tendon.   I know I should go back to physio but I can’t face it.  What normal person does a totally new injury just 24 hours after resolving the last injury??

I have been undertaking some home care – resting it, icing it etc – exactly what I did for my tendinitis.  This morning it is not feeling too bad.  I can go up and down from tippy toes without swearing, but it still aches if I walk around for more than  a couple of minutes.  I am hoping that a few more days of rest will see it come good.  If it doesn’t, I promise I will go back to physio.  However, this time, when it feels good, I will not test it out with a 5km run.  I will gradually ease back into running.  This means I will be walking the City To Surf, but that is okay.  I refuse to reinjure myself before heading to New York in 6 weeks time.  I have always wanted to take a jog in Central Park and damned if I am going to be injured and unable to do so.  Also, my body obviously needs to ease back into exercise.  I had forgotten how far I have come over the last 8 months from needing crutches to walk to doing 7 hours a week of martial arts training.  A break of 3 weeks is going to set me back some and I need to gradually build my activity level back up again.  I have to remember that.

The Power of Good Songs To Run To

Image by Forever Digital

I went for my first 5km run since developing tendinitis in my right foot three weeks ago and my foot felt really good, no pain at all.  I ran it in 38:07 which is 16 seconds off my PB of 37:51.  Not too bad for someone who has been sitting on their butt for the past three weeks.  I put this down to my new “Running Songs” playlist.  Some good tunes with a great beat make running almost fun and helps you keep a really good pace.

My “Running Songs” playlist currently consists of:

Runs In The Family – Amanda Palmer

Leeds United – Amanda Palmer

Oasis – Amanda Palmer

Song 2 – Blur

When The Going Gets Tough – Billy Ocean

Spice Up Your Life – Spice Girls

Loose – Stella One Eleven

It’s Raining Men – Weather Girls

Wake Me Up Before You Gogo – Wham!

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper

Mickey – Toni Basil

Only Happy – Garbage

Push It – Stella One Eleven (cover of the Salt N Peppa song)

I’m So Excited – Pointer Sisters

Glittering Clouds (Locusts) – Imogen Heap

Baby Elephant Walk – Henry Mancini

Holding Out For A Hero – Frou Frou

What songs do you love running to?  What songs make you pick up the pace and keep on going?

Off Track

Just realised it has been 10 days since I have updated. Sorry folks. I have had the week from hell this week (you can read all about it on my personal blog) and that has thrown everything off track. My diet has gone out of the window (hides the evidence of the 12 squares of chocolate she has eaten today) and exercise has been non existence thanks to the hellish week and the fact I am still recovering from tendinitis – it has been taking its pretty time to heal.

*sigh*  I really need to get things back on track and soon.  I feel so much better, both mentally and physically, when I exercise regularly and eat well.  I have to keep reminding myself of that.  I am finding it way too comfortable being back on the couch again and I can’t let myself go back to being a couch potato.  I am going to try to back to Kung Fu on Tuesday and start training for the City 2 Surf which is now less than 4 weeks away.   I have to get off my ass and get back out there again.  I will feel better for it.

Update From The Sidelines

It has been just over a week since I was diagnosed with tendinitis in my right foot and was told I could not do any physical activity until it healed. It has been a very long week. My body is just not used to sitting around doing nothing and I am going a little stir crazy. I spent the weekend literally on the couch, playing The Sims to keep me from going insane. As much as I hated it, the time on the couch has done my foot a world of good. It is healing and responding well to treatment. I am no longer in constant pain and when my foot is in a shoe I can almost forget that there is anything wrong with it. However, in bare feet, walking is still quite painful.

Exercise has been pretty much non-existent, however last night I did some exercises that didn’t involved the use of my feet. I did three rounds of 10 girly push-ups, 10 sit ups and 10 incline push ups. It was embarrassing how much conditioning I have lost in just a week. I feel considerably weaker. However, I am hoping that when I am allowed to start exercising again, that my strength returns quickly. The fact that I have only 6 weeks to go until the City to Surf is weighing on my mind. I have no idea how I’m going to run 14km with barely any training. I think it is going to be more like a long walk, which annoys me, but I can’t rush my recovery period or else I will end up back where I started again.

I am hoping that after my next round of physio on Friday that I will be cleared to resume light physical activity such as my morning 5km dog walk so I can start getting back into it again. I think another weekend on the couch would definitely drive me insane.

Sidelined For two Weeks

Last Tuesday at my Kung Fu grading, I hurt my right foot during the warm up.  I didn’t really think that much of it and the pain wasn’t anything serious, so I took no notice of it.  In fact I took so little notice of it that I went to training on Thursday and Saturday.  However, after Saturday’s training session I was in some serious pain and on Monday when my foot was doing a very good impression of a balloon, I decided to get it checked out.

The initial diagnosis came back as a suspected stress fracture so I was sent off for x-rays and an ultrasound.  The x-rays were clear but the ultrasound showed a ganglion cyst between the first and second metatarsal.  Since ganglion cysts usually go away on their own, I thought I had completely dodged the bullet and would hopefully be back at training on Saturday.  However, my appointment with the physio this afternoon revealed that the ganglion cyst was a red herring and I have actually strained the extensor tendon that runs up my second metatarsal.  The medical term for it is extensor tendinitis.  I have been told that I have to keep off my foot as much as possible and will not be able to go back to training for at least 2 weeks.   My right foot is now covered in tape to reduce the load on my tendon and give it a chance to heal.

I have no idea what I am going to do with myself for the next two weeks.  I can’t sit on the couch and do nothing – I will go insane.  I am thinking that there has to be some exercises that I can do without using my feet.  Sit-ups and girly push-ups don’t involve the feet and I might be able to do some pull-ups as well.

If you can think of any exercises I can do, that will not aggrrevate my tendinitis, please let me know.  I’ve gotta find a way to get in some exercise or my stress levels are going to go through the roof.