This was by far my most tiring, busiest, and most fun weekend in a while. Here’s how it panned out:

On Saturday, my amazing driving instructor picked me up from HHRay’s house for our 8:30 am driving lesson. We limited the lesson to an hour because he knew I had to be in Fremantle that morning and practiced parking. I actually did quite well and am starting to feel like maybe I won’t become a safety hazard when and if I ever get my actual license. I’m still doubtful that they’ll want to unleash me onto the roads of Perth, but we’ll see.

I then quickly got ready in 20 minutes or so and HHRay’s dad’s girlfriend was kind enough to drop me off at the Cockburn train station. I caught up on much needed sleep on the bus and when I finally reached Fremantle the weather was just getting seriously hot (well, seriously hot until real summer actually kicks in).

Wayne flew in from the U.S. that Friday and we were meeting in Fremantle before our trip to Rottnest on Sunday. I knew Wayne to be a great hummus lover, so decided to feed the addiction by bringing him some hummus as a Perth welcome gift. Now, by this time the hummus wasn’t exactly cool. In fact, I wasn’t sure if it was even still edible due to me carrying it around for 2 hours in the heat. Wayne tasted the hummus with a suspicious look on his face, sniffed, and declared that it was “OK”. By this time anything better than “It’s gone off. I’m going to die.” was great in my book.

We spent the day semi-exploring Fremantle, pretending to be related, honing our Ninja skills, eating ice cream, comparing iPhone apps (my collection was, of course, superior), wearing zombie masks, and drinking some sort of blueberry tea. I think the biggest surprise of the day was that Wayne had no idea what a Snuggie was. What kind of a fashionista is he? Every reputable girl knows what a Snuggie is, even if she doesn’t have one. Wayne, for your convenience I made this so that you would be able to picture how great you’d look in a Snuggie:

Wayne in a Snuggie with Hummus

Anyway, when I got back to HHRay’s house the weather was still nice and warm. I suffered through a soaking wet bear hug as he got out of the pool, we had dinner, and I caught the bus back to my house as HHRay went out clubbing with some friends. I hadn’t eaten except for ice cream all day, so the dinner didn’t exactly fill me up and I ordered something delicious and nutritious from Eagle Boys pizza.

I tried going to sleep early, I really did. But the Rottnest 5km Fun Run which I’d be running tomorrow (the same day as the Rottnest marathon) was keeping me up. I made sure to prepare everything for the day: triple check the dates and times, make sure I had our tickets, grab a sufficient number of pins for the race numbers, make sure the race numbers were in their envelopes, make sure my running clothes didn’t suddenly shrink or stretch overnight, and all of that other good stuff. I even went for a 2km run just to make sure everything was in working order.  Finally, after an episode of Stargate Universe and a movie, I managed to fall asleep at about 2am.

Fast forward to 10:30am – start of the race. By this time Wayne has successfully managed to convince a lady that he’s my father and we have picked out our two “targets” for the race – the people we’d be striving to beat. His was a fast and fit-looking young man. Mine was a 10-year-old looking girl.

So the race started and I took off – or rather shuffled off – on the course. At first I was thinking “Hey, this isn’t as hilly or windy as I was expecting!” The wind never ended up bothering me, but I was so wrong about the hills. Slowly I felt myself starting to climb. I ran up the first “big” (in my book) hill, but had to actually jog/walk up the second. Thankfully, the ascent in the first half of the race could only mean one thing on the way back – a downhill run. At one point I saw Wayne pass me, not looking tired at all. I thought about being jealous, but then remembered that I could never be jealous of someone who’s never seen a Snuggie and continued on my way. I looked something like this (reenactment):

Rottnest Fun Run 5km Reenactment

By the end of the race I was sweating profusely, my legs felt like lead, and I struggled to keep up my breathing pattern. All of a sudden I see this flash of vampire-like skin approaching in the distance and realize that wow, this must be Wayne coming back. It was. He ran with me the rest of the way, which wasn’t as long as I expected, and I got a good sprint in toward the end.

Wayne finished something like either 6th or 11th, we won’t know until the results are posted on the WAMC website (which they have been for the Marathon, but not for the Fun Runs as of yet). We ate, had a rest, and then decided to hire out some bikes and explore the island. I learned that Wayne takes great pictures of himself. I can never get the angle just right when I’m camera-whoring, but his form and lighting was excellent:

Wayne's Photography Skills

We tried to get a photo of us feeding a quokka  a leaf, but by the time we got my phone out and turned on the camera the quokka was no longer interested. So Wayne took a photo of me accepting a leaf instead, so you can see what the quokka would look like if it wasn’t being so snobby and rejecting our offering:

Quokka Feeding

Other than that we also climbed a sand dune:

Wayne Blending in with the Sand

I make fun of him, but we’re both pretty much just as pale as each other:

Wayne's Photography Skills

Anyway, it was a fun weekend and I was thoroughly exhausted by the time I got home. I had it easy, though. Wayne had to do a 2-hour talk straight after we got back from Rottnest.

That night I was very happy to see and make up with HHRay, but there’s a whole another story there so I’ll leave it for another post. We still have some things to resolve, but it was great to see him and get my dosage of cuddles.

Also that night, I realized that I forgot to put sunscreen on my back, so my shoulders are pretty burnt (though thankfully not peeling…my skin isn’t the peeling kind I think, it just goes red). I’m so happy that I have tomorrow off. I need a sleep-in. Not to mention my laser eye surgery consultation appointment is tomorrow, so it’s going to be very exciting!

Overall, I had an excellent weekend.

Rottnest Island

As I type this I’m laying in bed, rubbing my head and trying to figure out what the heck happened.

Earlier today I stepped out of the house in my running leggings and top, feeling good and stretching on the doorstep. It’s a warm day, bordering on what I would call ‘hot’, but not too scorching. I made sure to drink water before my run and felt great. After having sudden trouble running my usual distance of 5km in my last run I was totally confident about today’s attempt.

So I set off down the road on the usual running path I take around the neighborhood. Two and a half laps of this path add up to 5km. I was holding my pace down on purpose, trying to forget about speed and just completing the distance. I was happy with a slow pace of about 5:30 per kilometer. Before I even finished the first lap I felt fatigued. I’ve been running 5km regularly for the past couple of months, what the heck could be happening now? My throat felt like sandpaper as I breathed and the top of my mouth was rough when I tried to moist it with my tongue.

I made sure to drink plenty of water before the run, but there I was – feeling dizzy and dehydrated and hot. The sun felt like it was burning a hole in my head, but I made myself keep going. After all, 5km was my goal today and no way was I stopping again.

I didn’t stop, but eventually my thighs began to cramp, my vision became disoriented, and it hurt to breathe in my throat. With half a kilometer to go, I gave up and slowed to a walk. Not only did slowing down not make me feel any better, but a flood of nausea instantly washed over me. My head was pounding and my legs felt as though they were about to give out from under me. I heard my heart racing as if it would break out of my ribcage any second.

“Please don’t let me throw up.” I thought as I passed by a park with kids playing with their families. I did not want to hunch over in the nearby bush and gross out the kids. Thankfully, I didn’t throw up and made it home without the fall that I was expecting to have any second. I stepped through the door on the 5km mark, feeling sick and defeated. When I looked in the mirror my face wasn’t red as I was expecting, but so pale that it looked almost white.

I’m now in bed, feeling a bit better but still really out of it. I know I have to get up and go to the shop soon as there is no food whatsoever in the house for me to eat. I was going to ride my bike to the shop, but catching the bus is probably a better option. Or maybe I could just go without food today, feels more tempting than getting up right now.

I’ve reached my two first running goals in the past couple of weeks: 1) 5km under 25 minutes. 2) 5km under 24 minutes.

My next goal is 5km under 23 minutes (small increments that seem reachable push and inspire me). I ran 5km today in 23 minutes and 1 second. You have no idea how angry with myself I was. Two seconds more and I could have reached my goal!

On another note, I keep reading about how untrustworthy Nike+ is. When comparing it with Google Maps, however, I’ve found that it’s been very trustworthy for me. But all this talk of how its distances are way off is making me paranoid. What if all of these completed goals are inaccurate?! Seriously need a Garmin Forerunner 305. The bike shop I got Dragon from was meant to have some Forerunners in two weeks ago, but they haven’t arrived yet.

I downloaded Yoga STRETCH for the iPhone this weekend and did my first “session”. I set it to a fairly low 15 minute duration, knowing that at this point I probably couldn’t handle much more. I was cautious about this app before as reviews said the sound was absolutely crap (to the point of hearing police sirens in the background), but the app has been updated since then and now I found the sound was both loud and clear enough.

Anyway, so I’m sitting there (thankfully both of my housemates were out so they couldn’t watch me make a fool of myself) in the lotus position (they called it something different), listening to this girl talking. She then took me through the Warrior I and Warrior II and Warrior Modified positions, plus some other ones. Let me tell you, when it got to the one where I have to prop myself up on one arm, lift the other into the air, lift one leg above me and try to look up toward my thumb and then hold this for one minute on each side I said “Screw it, maybe Yoga just isn’t for me.”

But I persevered. I held it. The next morning I felt nothing. I now feel like I’ve been through some sort of a super painful massage. My body is in pain, mostly around my back, the back of my thighs, and butt. I’m starting to think I should do this Yoga thing more often.

Overweight Models on Runways

I keep reading about how big women are the latest craze in fashion. You see bigger women on catwalks and it’s hailed as something that promotes better self esteem for bigger women. Sure, it’s good that we’re swinging away from having stick thin runway models. I may be underweight, but I recognize that we shouldn’t promote being underweight. But why are we starting to promote being obese? As news.com.au says, you’d be hard pressed to find a woman who is over size 14 (Australian sizes) who is still in the healthy weight range. The world is fat and it’s getting fatter. It might make fat people feel better about their weight when they see big butts and flabby arms strutting it on the catwalk, but it doesn’t encourage them to get any healthier.

I think that when it comes to runway models, we need to find a middle ground instead of swinging from one extreme to another – not too skinny, but also not too fat.

So for the past couple of days I’ve had some real trouble running. I just wasn’t feeling it. I was stopping less than halfway from my targeted distance. And then I realized – running is like being in a relationship. You can’t overthink it and this is exactly what I was doing – overthinking running. I recently reached my goal of running 5km in under 25 minutes and that’s when the problems started. I kept focusing on getting better, improving my times, progressing, taking the “relationship” to the next level. I was concentrating so much on changing and improving that I found myself not paying attention to my actual partner – you know, the running part of things. I was like a bride-wannabe, collecting magazine cutouts of wedding dresses and venues (in this case running shoes, training sheets, and motivational articles) – while forgetting to enjoy the actual run.

I can’t say I’m out of the woods yet, but today I went for a run with my two housemates (I guess you could call it a foursome – me, the run, and them) and it was thoroughly enjoyable! I didn’t pay attention to time or pace, relaxed, and just felt myself run. Eventually I’ll be able to find a nice balance between tracking my progress and just being able to roll with it.

(On an unrelated note, the housemates and I just started watching Gabriel. I remember seeing this at the cinema and really enjoying it! The soundtrack is awesome)

Vanilla Soup’s redesign is finished and I’m happy with the outcome.

Anyway, my running’s been off for the past couple of days. Ever since I beat my goal of running 5km under 25 minutes, I just haven’t been able to run. I’m not sure why. Last night I set out to do 5km and could only go for 2. Today I set out to do 10km and only went for 4.6. I suspect that maybe setting a new personal best and reaching my goal a few days ago made me focus more on goals and tracking and always having to do better rather than actually running. I’ve decided that the next time I run, I’ll hide my phone from myself so I can’t see my progress. I’ll keep running until it stops being enjoyable or until I can’t run anymore, and check how I did once I’m done.

I went to Runners World in Northbridge today about my ankle issue after the 10km. I have 3 races coming up, each of them 10km (with one being 12km) and needed to get this sorted out asap so I’m not risking any injuries in upcoming runs. The man there was very nice, didn’t even try to sell me anything. He took a look at my shoes to check what side is more prone to wear and tear (he found that most of the wear is in the middle as opposed to one side, which he said is good because it means I don’t over-pronate or under-pronate too much). He advised that the ankle pain I may be feeling is just my body not being used to running this kind of distance and said that if in my next couple of runs the pain doesn’t improve, to come back and then we’ll need to look into another pair of shoes.

I ran my first 10km this weekend, I was very proud :D. My ankles hurt quite a bit because I wasn’t used to running that kind of distance (my max before this was 6.2km), but I finished it in 53 minutes. My next three races will be:

Nike+ Human Race
Bunbury Surf to Surf
A 12km fun run for diabetes (hopefully).

I took up cycling to supplement my running and so far so good! I never imagined that cycling would get me tired faster than running does, but right now that’s exactly how it works. I can run for longer without feeling out of breath than I can cycle.

I’ve definitely gotten more muscle on my legs, the rapid change is actually kind of scary. I think I need to start doing some upper body work to balance out all of the leg exercise I’m doing.

As for my bike – I got an entry level mountain bike (named Dragon..because he’s red). It’s a Merida Matts 10 V.