The most incredible experience !

What a truly incredible experience! I will never forget what has been one of the most amazing days of my adult life, Sunday June 24th 2012 when I lined up with Team LIVESTRONG Ironman and raced Nice. Well all 170km ish...I ran out of knee and out of time literally. I will say this Ironman is a worthy adversary. I remember Chrissie Wellington saying that you train for Ironman giving it the respect it deserves. Well I can safely say I get that one now. What I don't get and am sure I never will  is how are the pro triathletes actually human beings?

I need to say the biggest Thank yous it is possible to express here to my amazing friend and fellow LIVESTRONG Leader Shu Milne, to say that she has gone above and beyond in friendship over the last few days is putting it mildly. I also need to say Thank you to Team LIVESTRONG Chris Brewer and Helen Knost for their unbelievable support and warmth. Racing with LIVESTRONG is more like being in a family as opposed to being on a team. We had the most fantastic lunch with them and other members of the team on Friday. It really kicked my weekend off meeting them and the team  and hearing other peoples stories about why they race LIVESTRONG. The team is made up of a really diverse group of people but what we all have in common is what LIVESTRONG means to us and why we want to race Ironman for them.

It only hit me what I was actually doing when we went down to check my bike in to the bike park and leave my bags in to transition on Saturday evening. There is nothing like the sight of 2,500 bikes under the fading pink Mediterranean sun to make you feel oddly surreal. I had great plans to sleep well and of course I clocked about 3 hours in the end and found myself upstairs at breakfast in the hotel with my fellow athletes at 4.30 am . Shu met me in my room and we brought my special needs bags and swim bag with us for the walk to the start line.My impression of the  warm air in a dark morning walking through Nice carrying my wetsuit  as other athletes and their families made the same pilgrimage to the start line will never leave me. Again another surreal moment of many I was to have over the next few hours.

Shu had to leave me at the gate of the bike park and I was allowed to check my bike and sort out my bottles and then we had to move up and leave our swim bag in and then get changed for the swim. The whole time you move up through the bike park and on up to the swim start line friends and family can walk alongside you from the other side of the railing. Shu tracked me the whole way up and it helped so much. Once I was suited up though I had to head down to the beach on my own and that is when I psychologically started getting in to a bit of trouble. I was really overwhelmed. I will not pretend otherwise. There where so many people or should I say so many men and we where packed on to this small pebbly beach and they where pumping out this dance music and I was just getting more terrified by the second as jet skis and boats circled in front of us and the furthest swim buoy was pretty much invisible to my eye.

Then suddenly a girl was by my arm and she said hello and we started to chat. She said to me do you know that we make up 7% of the entrants in the race and I said I had some idea but I didn't realise it was that small. She told me she was from California and had just done the Triathlon escape from Alcatraz a few weeks ago and she just loves racing. She emphasised how she feels it is important for us as women to get out there and be visible racing. Then she told me that she is originally from Afghanistan and she was lucky enough to get to leave there when she was a child. She carries it with her always this thought, as she see's it about this opportunity of freedom that was afforded to her as a woman and how she must not waste it. Her way of honouring that freedom is to race strong . Her story completely took me out of myself and then all of a sudden she melted off in to the throng but she left me with her story and I felt stronger.

Not so strong that I was able to take to the water with everyone else when they crashed in like an avenging army. I can put my hand up here and say I did a sort of slide on my bottom in to the water while I watched it all spread out ahead of me in shock. So I just started slow and tried to pretend I was on my own and I stuck to the side so canoes where close by. By doing this eventually I must have caught up with a group of swimmers and then I just focused on them and watching whoever was next to me swimming. I only looked up too sight the odd time and just to listen if they shouted at us to get back over and if we where being led around a buoy. I didn't allow myself to think about where I was in relation to the coastline or how long I had to swim, I just kept it about my stroke and breathing and whoever was next to me. I had to swim slow too. My shoulder had been pretty bad on the swims since I had arrived and they had been 600 metres or so. This was 3.4km! There was one moment during the swim when the sun really started to rise and all I could think was how beautiful is this and how lucky am I to be sharing this ocean with 2,500 people on a Sunday morning.

After the swim I felt amazing but I realised as well that I had been quite slow but at this stage that didn't bother me as I was just reeling with delight from completing an Ironman swim. Like all my dreams I had ever had suddenly coming true in front of me. I ran past Helen coming out of the swim and she was cheering me on and then as I got on to my Bike Chris was there with his huge smile and that was fantastic as well. I felt good getting on to my bike but then I started to feel really sick in my stomach and this was the start of a day where pretty much thinking about your tummy off and on is an ongoing obsession, hence now I get this nutrition thing and how important it is. One lesson I have learnt is I actually cannot eat anything solid, like anything. I actually almost collapsed laughing at km 70 when they handed me my special needs bag that I had packed a baguette and crisps in to! I looked at it in horror and grabbed the Pepsi and handed the rest of the bag back.

I felt really sick for I would actually say about 100 or so km. I just kept on taking gels and water and coke anyway and kept on following a 15 minute rule with getting something in to me. I sort of had this routine in the end that I stuck to on the run with gels, coke, power bar mix and small bits of banana. Every time I even tried to have a bike bar I nearly got sick but I knew I had to keep getting calories in so it must have worked because I completed 180km of the most brutal, beautiful and terrifying bike course I have ever been on in my life. I met some great people a long the way too. Not many triathletes as the pack was long gone, I was very much one of the lone rangers and there where times that I really felt as if I was actually not even on course as I was just climbing up these mountains just me and the bike and the twisty road and this unrelenting sun searing you across your back as you inch up. It was so quiet at times that I found it meditative. I found it really peaceful up there just the bike and me up against those steep roads. It was painful and slow though. I was going very slowly and I was aware of that too. Once the descending starts though it is a whole other ball game as then I was fighting off vertigo at times trying not to look sideways on turns as I just did not want to know how far up I was descending from. At some point up there I pulled my knee pretty bad and it really started to kick in on the way down. By the time I was 60km away from Nice I was in a good bit of pain every time I turned the peddle on the right side. 10km out and it was screaming at me. But the adrenaline of trying to make it back before the bike cut off time was really pushing me on and I was getting a massive second wind. As I was biking along the promenade the marathon was in full swing and it was really spurring me on. As I jumped off my bike I asked did I make it? It was actually a spectator who told me that it was by 17 minutes!

I think I sort of knew after lap one of the marathon course that I wasn't going to finish but I just wanted to stay out until I knew for sure. There was this conflicting dream/reality thing still going on. The cut off at Nice is 16 hours not 17 hours and so because of that it was going to be really hard especially as my knee was getting worse. I jogged the first two 10 km laps only walking through the aid stations so I could do the coke, water and gel thing. Then on lap three I started walking and running was pretty much limping at that stage on the knee. I just wanted to stop I was so upset. I did think then of people who inspire me and LIVESTRONG and I kept saying come on just keep going. I really wanted it as well for myself and all day those words Allez Vanessa had been ringing in my ears. From early in the morning all through the day and now in to the night on the promenade des Anglais those two words had been shouted to me whether it was from young french cyclists out on a training ride bounding like kangaroos up the hills in front of me shouting out their encouragement in their wake, or people on the sides of the road, at the aid stations and now lining the promenade all calling my name. All my wonderful team LIVESTRONG Shu, Chris and Helen. Chris told me how proud he was of me when I started on the run and it really spurred me on and then Shu and Helen stood tirelessly about a third of the way from the finish line cheering us all on. I told Shu to give me an idea of my time doing the third lap as my garmin had died up on a mountain hours ago and anyway I was too tired to think for myself at this stage. When we realised that I had actually gone down to the snails pace of 1hr 30 minutes we knew that Ironman France had , had his day with me and he had won by 10km or so. 

It was hard walking back to the bike park on the other side of the finish line and hearing the spectacle that is an Ironman finish, especially one in the South of France. It is like magic the setting. Nice at night time with the Ironman party all around is again something surreal. But Ironman is not fair. It is your adversary and you either win or you lose. I think I lost fair and square. I did not expect to finish and I think I only got upset because it happened so close to the finish but once the reality of what I had actually achieved sank in I was able to let go of that pretty fast this morning. I decided to keep on with the Ironman this year so I could fulfil my commitment of racing with Team Livestrong Ironman. As I started training properly with the help of my amazing coach Claudia yes as each week went by I did keep thinking hey maybe I can aim for more than the swim , oh maybe I can do the whole bike and yes last week I started to think I might get off the bike too. Never once did I think I would finish and actually when I got to Nice and became very intimidated by the whole Ironman environment and the other athletes I started to feel like a fool and that I really shouldn't start, but I made myself start because all the support from Shu and Team LIVESTRONG and the inspiration I draw from the people in my life who are either cancer survivors or are people who are out trying to live their best lives, all of it pushes you to just try, and then finally that girl from Afghanistan her story probably got me in to the water. All our stories bound together can help us to do anything we want to do.

The only time I started wanting to finish the Ironman was as my amazing day unfolded in front of me. I will not pretend I was not terrified or felt completely out of my depth as an athlete compared to most other people. I wont say that I was not in a lot of pain too but what overrode it was the trip. The journey of that day in the sea and on my bike and on that long run was just amazing. I actually loved every single second of it. Ironman is a sensory , emotional , physical and mental experience like none other. Everyone is out there driven by something. Everyone is pushing themselves so hard you can feel it and to be part of all that energy even as the lone ranger close to the back is like none other. My coach said to me that Ironman is about you being empowered to see that anything is possible, well she was not wrong.

The only thing is Ironman France has 10km or more belonging to me. As I took off in the plane over the promenade today I looked down on to the marathon route and I said I will be back. Last night I lay with a cold heinekin can in place of ice on my knee as Shu said the ice machine was well and truly cleared out. Suprise suprise! As I lay there I said never ever again, but as every good defeat you wake up the next day feeling stronger.  I replied to one of Helen's emails just before deciding to write my blog before sleep and I thanked her for all of their support. I also said that it had been so inspiring hearing all the team members stories. I told her that I will be going back to Nice in 2013 in exactly the same tri vest  racing for LIVESTRONG and both raising funds and trying to get that last 10km or so for my medal. More than ever now I want to keep racing for LIVESTRONG and more than ever I want to keep racing Ironman. What ever happens in the future Team LIVESTRONG Ironman will keep getting stronger as a team both in Honor of the ultimate athlete and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong and also to keep raising funds for the LIVESTRONG mission to serve the 28 million living with cancer. I have a feeling that there are a lot more potential team LIVESTRONG Ironmen out there!

Thank you to every single person who supported me in my dream to be a member of Team LIVESTRONG Ironman and most especially to all my donors. As in the absolute bigger picture we are all out there supporting the 28 million living and fighting cancer every day of their lives.

I really do not want to race in France with no Lance...

I have felt sick since I heard the news yesterday that the WTC (world Triathlon Corporation) have banned Lance Armstrong from competing in next Sunday’s Iron man France in Nice on June 24th. Due to the allegations that USADA are bringing against Lance the WTC have said that this makes him ineligible to compete in any of their races.

 Whatever the validity or not of  any charges against Lance concerning his past cycling career, what over shadow’s any of that issue is the way in which all of this is being conducted. The timing apart from anything else is appalling. This has been timed to cause as much trouble as possible for Lance, his family and friends who were looking forward to seeing him compete. This will cause upset to his fellow competitors and spectators of the sport, and most importantly his foundation LIVESTRONG and their investment in his Iron man journey with Team LIVESTRONG Iron man. Funds that may I stress where being raised for the fight against Cancer.  To level all this at him one week before Nice, The timing is just nasty. I am sorry but it is.

As someone who has been both a cycling fan and a Triathlon fan it has gotten to the point now where you just want to scream. I cannot see how any of this bears any relevance on anything anymore. People have decided, they have made their decisions about all this, and also the past is the past and like everything in history the further away we get from something the harder it gets to judge, as we cannot possibly really understand the full circumstances around those events and conditions from our standpoint in the present.  What is truly shoddy about all of this is the pointing of the finger at one cyclist.  Many of us know plenty about that era in cycling and if it was indeed a culture of doping, well you cannot bring that to bear on one person’s doorstep, least of all a cyclist. Everyone knows that if there is a culture of anything going on in sport then the athlete is usually as much of a victim as anyone can be, faced quite often with impossible choices.  Considering the era we are referring too it makes it even more dreadful to pluck a few people out and hang them out to dry and try to pin on them the blame for an entire period of time that was complex and opaque. This is exactly what a witch hunt does. A with hunt tries to simplify the complex to get nice and neat answers and so they will vilify a few people to get their boxes ticked.

Life is not black and white and sometimes we cannot have the answers and even more importantly sometimes we cannot ever know and we need to be satisfied with that. Lance is being targeted because of his celebrity and visibility it really is that simple. In February there was a collective sigh of relief and most people I think felt that relief not because absolutely everyone felt Lance was lily white but because they recognised that it didn’t matter. we didn’t need to know any more about this and what was more important was Lance’s tireless work for the cancer community in the present day, and his legacy in that regard, and even more importantly the future potential of LIVESTRONG, his foundation, still in its infancy but doing amazing things for the global cancer community, many people saw that this was what needed to be preserved and maintained above all else.

I visited Austin Texas in March and attended the LIVESTRONG assembly and I toured their Headquarters and heard LIVESTRONG speak to us for two days about their mission and their future goals all geared towards helping the 28 million living with cancer around the world. I listened to both Doug Ulman and Lance speak, and there was such an air of optimism about the future for their organisation. It was truly lovely to witness. I have supported them now for just over 3 years. I did find the organisation via Lance’s book but quickly became incredibly impressed by LIVESTRONG, the cancer organisation and all it had to offer the global cancer community.

LIVESTRONG and Lance are of course intertwined and he brought to bear on the building of his foundation the same will power, fight and intensity as we witnessed on the bike and we read about in how he fought his own cancer battle. LIVESTRONG are all about people. They started with one man’s cancer story and they are now all about millions of people’s cancer story. Lance has always maintained that it is all about the story, the power of a person’s cancer story to both release them and also to help release others, whether from loneliness or from stigma. LIVESTRONG has been built from this one guiding principle, the person and their story, they also let that guide their programs and initiatives they either implement or get behind. 

They want to strip lance of his jerseys maybe? But they cannot strip him of attributes he possesses that have enabled him to fight off a truly deadly cancer diagnosis and build a truly wonderful cancer foundation, a truly unique foundation. Think about the wristband? As Doug Ulman said himself, this wristband democratised philanthropy, for the first time ever for a dollar anyone could participate in the awareness raising process. The wristband was also there before social media, it actually did what social media campaigns do now on line, raise mass awareness about a cause. LIVESTRONG have always been at the forefront of new ways of raising awareness and fighting cancer. They didn’t invent the concept of survivor ship but they have run with it in such a way that it has brought it to the forefront of the cancer community consciousness in such a way as it never was before. Nearly everything they support or implement is based on this element.

I do want to mention Lance as a cyclist as well. I read a really good blog post this morning by a girl and in it at the end she said when all is said and done there was no one more bad ass on a bike than Lance and we all loved watching him, all of us. We build up our sporting heroes and invest in them so much and we do forget they are people just like the rest of us. But whatever Lance did or didn’t do during the course of his cycling career no one can take that away from him, it was intensely beautiful to watch him on a bike. That absolute will power and determination of spirit stamped all over everything he did out there on the road, that part was real, for sure it was and he brought that in to everything he has built up ever since.

The bottom line in all of this is, we don’t need to know anything more about what went on or didn’t during Lance’s cycling career, this was a difficult period for the sport of cycling, but then one could argue every decade has been a challenging one for the sport of cycling. Are we going to blame him for what went on during the Tour De France in 1911? Hmmm quite. 

What is truly cruel about all this is the timing when he had just been given a breathing space after the federal prosecution was closed down in February. Finally he could get on with helping to run his foundation, look after his family and also getting back to his triathlon roots.  Lance loves to compete, he is let’s face it one of the most competitive sportsmen on the planet and he is the ultimate athlete, to rob him of that outlet and also rob the rest of us from the spectacle that was Lance racing Iron man and all the attendant fun and drama inherent in that. Lance was bringing a lot of good in Ironman’s direction and there were also a lot of us starting to get out there and raise funds for Team LIVESTRONG Iron man so we could race in a team with Lance and also give back to LIVESTRONG and the cancer fight at the same time.

I pulled from Iron man France last year after a really bad injury I couldn’t shake, I then pulled again this March just passed from Iron man France 2012 because of the same injury that was still playing up. What changed? I went to the USA and the confidence and inspiration I got from being out in that country, first from staying with my friend in LA and then my trip to Austin with LIVESTRONG. I also stayed with my triathlon coach Claudia Spooner in Austin for an extra week and it was then it began to grow in me to try and give it a go, give it a go for Team LIVESTRONG even if I am not up to it. Liz Kreutz, Lance’s long time photographer spoke to me at the LIVESTRONG assembly and said just do it, don’t miss out on France and how amazing it will be to be out there with all of us and LIVESTRONG, she said even just train enough to do the swim. She made me realise that this was bigger than me. I was committed to my fund raising goal and to Team LIVESTRONG and of course the absolute treat of getting to be on the same race course as Lance Armstrong for a day.

So I came back to Ireland on April 7^th wondering can I? It has been so hard, the injury is clearing but not quite but there was a miracle. I did start hitting the training goals, I started to love swim, bike and run again and I started to get really excited about going to France with Team LIVESTRONG Iron man to race and raise awareness about cancer. I have a fabulous coach in Claudia, and I got amazing support from fellow LIVESTRONG leaders, even one of my LIVESTRONG leader friends Shu Milne was coming to Nice to support me and cheer me on. I have had all throughout this period of time as well so many doubts. I am so tired and I have a shoulder problem now from swimming that I didn’t talk about this last week. I am finding it hard to keep weight on as it has been such a dramatic build up over the last few weeks to just see if I can do this.

As soon as I heard about this latest action against Lance yesterday I felt physically sick and I knew right then and there I didn’t want to go to Nice but at the same time I felt I should sleep on it and just see, especially as I picked up a bit of a bug yesterday and so I was really not in the right frame of mind to make decisions. I got a lovely message from Team LIVESTRONG about the race but I just felt sick. I think it’s all been so emotional anyway all of this for me. I have trained very hard in a very short period of time so I could not miss out and be part of this and yes of course I desperately want Iron man, but deep down inside I did know I was going there to not so much complete but participate so that has been hard mentally on me as well, to have to prepare for a race like that, knowing it’s not realistic to really expect to finish.

I have had a really difficult couple of years with injury and other issues, recently I have been so lucky to be injury free enough to work, and I am also working again for a really great person Tina Murphy, I love her company “Run with Tina”, and her ethos around fitness. I had gotten back to loving my Triathlon training too, but this has knocked me out for the count it really has. I feel like I  spent as a cycling fan two years listening to poisonous stuff then there is a break and now it’s leaking all over triathlon stuff as well. I am also really disappointed in the WTC, I can’t help it. I know they are saying it’s their rules but I can’t help it I feel disillusioned and I just have lost faith right now.

 

I am thinking about taking a huge step back from Triathlon and just swimming, biking and running this year for the love of it and then reassessing Iron man next year. To be honest I feel right now like I  don’t want to race until I hear an apology to Lance and a lift on that ban so he can get back to doing what he loves best. But we will see.

I have really important things in my life with my fitness career and also I wrote my part of a press release today for the joint program as a LIVESTRONG leader I am doing with bray cancer support centre for cancer survivors. This is what counts, my work for LIVESTRONG and this is what I said and it helped me a lot today.

"I am excited to be involved in this fantastic program. Ever since I first had a meeting with Bray cancer centre I was struck by the similarity in their outlook and focus with the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and their shared priorities in both the initiatives and programs they implement themselves and support.

Bray Cancer Centre and LIVESTRONG both put survivor ship at the top of their agenda’s and a program such as this one reflects that priority, based as it is upon the cancer survivors needs and the desire to enhance their quality of life.

Due to the inspiration and education I have received from LIVESTRONG as one of their volunteer leaders I decided to begin the process of qualifying myself to be trained in prescribing physical activity to cancer survivors. This area is now understood to be a crucial component of survivor ship and cancer survivors are encouraged to participate in exercise to help in their on-going recovery. Through my LIVESTRONG connections I have also built up knowledge about nutrition principles that are beneficial for cancer survivors to be educated about.

I feel honoured to be part of this program with bray cancer support. For me this will be the first time I will be using my skills as a cancer survivor physical trainer and I thank bray cancer and LIVESTRONG who have both made this development possible!"

This is what counts for all of us involved in the cancer community, what helps people affected by cancer? And to put it simply LIVESTRONG help people affected by cancer, right now in the present in the now and their potential to do that in the future can only grow a thousand fold. Lance’s legacy is this work, that’s what counts now and the rest of it, the past it needs to be left alone.

I am not sure what I will do about France but I am so happy I hit my fund raising goal for the team and I still have some dollars from training miles I put in, still to add to the fund.  It was an article in the Iron man magazine, " Lava" that inspired me to donate a dollar per mile for my own training to LIVESTRONG. Yes Lance brought a lot in to the sport of Iron man in a short period of time, he really did. I just hope for him because he love’s Triathlon and for the good of the sport he will be back again one day. In the meantime I wish Lance and his family and friends all the very best through this difficult time.

3 more weeks until Team LIVESTRONG Ironman France

In a little over three weeks on Sunday June 24th, I will be lining up at the start line of Ironman France with Team LIVESTRONG.  Up until about 6 weeks ago this looked highly unlikely, well I had actually decided to not go ahead with it. I can honestly say 6 weeks later that it has been one of the best recent decisions I have made deciding to just go for it come what may.

I have been very lucky as a lot of elements started to fall in to place once this decision was made. I have really the most absolutely brilliant Coach, and I would say to anyone, if you want to achieve something like this, or try too, get yourself a Coach. A good Coach who gives you a really sound plan and who also listens and understands what is going on with you; well you cannot put a price on it. Claudia Spooner has literally transformed my entire experience of training for Triathlon.

Training wise I feel amazing, very tired but great. I honestly don’t know if there is enough time left for me to get to a point where I am for sure strong enough to last the distance but at the same time on every other level I am so happy I was able to pick up this journey and make the best of it, both for myself, and for LIVESTRONG.  To get an opportunity to rediscover my love for swim, bike and run and how it makes me feel so happy and calm and focused has been a huge gift if nothing else. I really hope the experience of Ironman France is going to be the first of many forays of mine into this wonderful world of long distance training and racing.

LIVESTRONG mean so much to me as an organisation and It’s great that I can give back in some small way to them at the same time. It was just a little over 3 years that I became involved with them and I really feel that they have a great deal to offer the Cancer community when it comes to tackling head on with determination and focus our foe Cancer. Importantly, as well as their many initiatives and campaigns and programs , they also focus a large amount of their resources on thinking about people, the cancer survivors needs and what is best for them.  They have a very people centric focus and I know from observing other LIVESTRONG Leaders and from reading other testimonials of people, who have received help, hope, or education from LIVESTRONG, they have all said this, That LIVESTRONG is about people. 

I will be proud to wear my LIVESTRONG Tri vest on June 24^th and I think it makes you consider the bigger picture more when you are racing and raising money for a cause.  For me recently it has made me consider how much it means to people being able to get out and utilize what they either do best or enjoy doing for something greater than themselves, either for individuals they know, or for an organisation itself. They use their bodies to race on behalf of those who cannot, we see it all the time with the Team LIVESTRONG athletes, all of their stories of raising money and racing for friends and family affected by Cancer inspires and uplifts me. Then in a really profound story I came across a few days ago people can race for a cause and for themselves ,so one day they can draw much needed strength from what they were once able to achieve..

 Chrissie Wellington posted a video the other day about Jon Blazeman, she talks about him a lot throughout her biography and how she does the Blazeman roll crossing the line at the end of every Triathlon she races , in honour of John who died from ALS ,also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, it is a progressive degenerative disease that attacks the motor neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain and spinal cord.  Jon was an athlete who had competed in many multi-sport events and after being diagnosed in 2005 he immediately started racing to raise awareness about this heart-breaking disease. He had always wanted to do an Ironman, most especially in Hawaii, he became the only person with ALS to complete an Ironman, and the video is just so astoundingly moving.

 In it John is basically appealing to us all to live our best lives, to save our own lives. He wanted to do an Ironman so he would have that thought in his mind once he was in a wheelchair. It was so profound; to help set his mind free he used the sport of Ironman to get there. To achieve the impossible using an unimaginable mental fortitude he must have possessed. There is something incredibly powerful about the human mind set upon doing something for themselves that they deeply want combined with their desire to raise awareness for something else that means so much to them, this powerful mix is probably why we see so many people achieving the impossible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vrjp2P0GlE  - As Chrissie Wellington said on her tweet “If you watch and RT one thing today please make it this” – Jon Blazeman Iron man journey on YouTube 

http://blog.livestrong.org/ - link to the LIVESTRONG official blog as if you roll down through a few of the posts you will get a flavour of the “people” focus I am talking about.

Cheerleader's

Do I have to write this every day between now and June 24^Th?  Oh to be less obsessed.  There are no adequate words to describe the weather here in Dublin today. Closest would be a mulch dense wet grey wind. That still doesn’t quite convey the desolate bit.  Luckily I had a training wing man this morning. I am not sure I would have made it through the run actually. At one point I was blown right and left and front and back and still couldn’t actually leave the same spot and move forwards. Battling with the wind I think it is called.  Darren has trained with me lots off and on over the last three years; he has always been very supportive of all my endurance endeavours. He always took part in the  Spin cycling challenges I organised in support of LIVESTRONG whilst working as an instructor at the gym, and he has come along on many a cycle and a run that absolutely no one else would have done with me when I needed a bit of training company in the past. 

Cheerleaders come in all sorts of different forms, I just looked up a definition of a cheerleader and it says “A person who leads cheers and applause, esp. at a sports event.” And “an enthusiastic and vocal supporter”. This word keeps coming up this week.  Well I keep bringing it up as well I suppose. Shu became my official Iron man France Cheerleader the other day and then today my friend Henrike another fellow LIVESTRONG Leader said that she is my cheerleader too. I followed Henrike’s last two blogs whilst she was fund raising to do her first half marathon for LIVESTRONG.  If you sponsored her she would then go out on her training run that day with the name of a cancer survivor you nominated written on her arm. I asked her to run for my young friend Donal Walsh and she did it twice for him, once on the roads of Germany where she lives and again in Austin Texas last October. It was powerful and it also reinforced to me that we can run for and also carry people if not maybe literally but figuratively in a way that can feel very real and comforting. Henrike is yet another leader I get so much inspiration from in all she does for LIVESTRONG and in her unique way of doing it.

Marie Ennis O Conner another great woman, and who I mentioned the other day said to me earlier that I am her cheerleader and so that was absolutely why I had to look it up. What a great word actually.  I think we all need enthusiastic and vocal supporters. It can be hard what we undertake to do, and so when those moments occur as they do so often when you are stretching yourself maybe as far as and maybe even beyond what you can do, it is during those moments when our cheerleader’s loud and positive voices resoundingly drown out our own doubts and misgivings.  

Earlier this evening I was on Face book, twitter, email and I was texting as well all at the same time. Pretty much all of it was connecting me in to feeling a little bit better. I don’t get this argument that social media is diluting our connectedness to one another. For me it is filling in even more dots, making all the white bits join up. We can’t always be engaged in face to face conversations with people and then for those of us who live alone well sometimes you just have to get on with it and there is nothing more lovely than the pings and beeps that remind us that we are not alone.  

Whilst we were running today Darren and myself starting talking about our injuries, he also said to me that if anyone tells you that you are not going to be in pain doing this, well  they are not telling the truth. That is a good straightforward bit of truth to hang on to.  There are injuries we cannot train through but there is also a degree of pain that is a given. 

I got to thinking this evening about my 27 year old self, it was actually because I was thinking about how sore my feet and back are. There is that other saying I like as well and it starts like this “Dear 27 year old me please do not be so prideful that you can rock the Parisian cobblestones like no other in your super high stilettos. There will come a day when the talent for serious cobble navigation and nights spent marching from one end of that city to another will be cursed and not blessed. Lol

 I don’t think I need to say anymore. My thoughts took a slightly more serious turn though and it took me back to what I was speaking of yesterday, the not knowing element whether it’s preparing for races or life.  When I was 27 I got engaged to my French boyfriend who I rocked those cobblestones with. If someone had of asked 27 years old me where I would be in 10 years’ time, I think I probably would have said something about having 4 children and hopefully being able to finally bake like Bertrand’s mother and even more importantly dress like her.  Lol…this evening 37 year old single and flat dwelling me got excited when she found a left over already baked potato in the fridge and some salad and grated cheese sitting close by.  She then consumed this whilst wearing a superman tee shirt...Quite.

You see you can’t know. It’s completely impossible to know. I always talk about how in awe I am when I see people going through cancer living as if they know everything is going to be okay even if they don’t. It is such a good lesson though as we just cannot know. All we can hope for are some really great cheer leaders and not too much rain next week as I actually have less than 8 weeks to go in all of this…