FINISH

Oh yeah, look at me go! My official time was 35:08, which I am very proud of! My name was in the paper and everything. That's pretty darn good for someone who decided to start running on a whim 3 weeks prior to the race.

So what's next? Well, to quote Jay-Z it's "on to the next one." I am planning on running the 10k leg of the Melbourne Marathon in October. Even though it starts at 7:30am on a Sunday. (Who does that? Honestly!) I'm using this Couch to 5k app that one of my colleagues informed me about to train. It's good, even though I'm not exactly the demographic it's targeting. I'm using it to build up my speed. It starts off with lots of walking and short bursts of running, so now I'm sprinting around the dog park. In the rain and the cold in the early hours of the morning. I think I'm going to enjoy running a whole lot more come summer!

As for my bike, I've got some money set aside for it, but I'm still going to be saving up my pennies for awhile. A friend of mine offered me the use of her bike, so I went up to hers yesterday to check it out. Unfortunately, as she is rather a lot taller than me, any attempt at stopping would mean getting all too familiar with her bike. It was nice of her to offer though.

I've called this blog FINISH because from here on in, that's what I'm all about! As you probably won't recall (unless you follow my blog religiously, which would be creepy and weird) in exactly one month from today my scholarship - and hence my financial security - ends. Also, in exactly one month from today, I turn 29. So, yay? And I have exactly 7 months from today to hand in my PhD. To all of this, all I can say is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Look, there's not much I can do about it but go with it. I've got a tutoring job this semester, which I am really super excited about, and I've got a bit of extra casual work on the go. As long as the work doesn't dry up, financially I'll be fine (I may even be better off considering I make a helluva lot more working than on a scholarship). The tricky bit is that there are limits on my visa to how many hours I can work, and as I can't study part time the only way to extend my candidature is to suspend my study and leave the country for awhile. And while a trip to the motherland would be quite nice, I have very little desire to spend my Australian summer in a Canadian winter.

So right now it's all about finding a balance between making enough money to survive, spending enough time studying to finish on time, and having enough down time to not go completely insane. I have already started making some changes to my life to prepare for my upcoming leap from the frying pan into the fire. I've got a rough 7 months ahead of me, but hey, I kick all sorts of ass, so there's no reason why I can't kick this challenge's ass too.

Mission: Accomplished!

Three weeks to train for a 5km race? No problem!!!

So today was the big day, my very first 5km race. And guess what?! I WON!!! I've got the medal to prove it and everything. ;)

Okay, so everyone who crossed the finish line has the medal to prove it, but so what? I kicked all sorts of ass out there, and while I probably won't know what my official time was for a couple more days, I know today's run was a personal best.

Like most things in my life, I jumped into doing this race with very little idea of what, exactly, I would be getting myself into. I decided to do it on a whim, just to prove to myself that I could. Until three weeks ago, the only running I'd ever done was the occassional mad sprint for the tram. Remember when I first said I was going to do this, and I figured I could run 5km in 45 minutes? My time was probably closer to 36 minutes. As I said, ass was kicked!!

I made my way down to Federation Square this morning, where I joined about a gazillion other Melbournites in trackies, skins, trainers, and race bibs. The 5km run started at 10:30am, which was nice as it gave me time to have my morning coffee, a bit of breakfast, and do some yoga before leaving my apartment. There were 3 waves: up to 30 minutes, 31-35 minutes, and 36+ minutes. I was in the last wave. Along with about a quarter of a gazillion other people, as it turns out!

As it approahced 10:30, I joined the other runners in the starting gate and was quickly faced with the unanticipated: there were A LOT of people running in this thing! And we were all squashed onto this road, and the gun was going to go off, and then...was I gonna get trampled...or was I gonna be doing the trampling? Obviously (perhaps) this wasn't unanticipated for the race organizers, and each wave got sent off in smaller, more managable groups. I think the overall trampling was kept to a minimum.

Finally it was my group's turn to go...and off we went! Normally I start off my runs by walking to warm up, but I'd already warmed up for this one, and by this point was feel rather pumped, so I just went for it! And it was AWESOME!!! In no time I was passing people, people who had started before me, and pretty soon I hit a good stride that I felt comfortable in.

Sometimes I think being almost completely unprepared for things can work to my advantage, and this race was definitely one of those times. There were two things that I was psychologically unprepared for that actually helped me to push myself more than I otherwise might have: the sheer volume of people I was running with, and the fact that I had only a very vague idea of how far I'd run and how much further I had to go.

Quickly after the race started, I realized that I was going to be spending a fair amount of time picking my way through packs of slower people. This was actually quite a lot of fun. I'd adjust my rhythme to those around me so that I could come up between two people at the exact moment a spot between them opened up. I'd jump in front of people running faster than me to get around someone slower than me and push myself to sprint so that I didn't end up getting trampled. I ran along the grass, on uneven pavement, and weaved my way through the crowds. Every time I passed a group of people, it made me want to push myself to keep running just that much longer.

The park where I've been doing my practice runs has a 1km track with markers every 100m (except for at 800m for some reason), so when I trained, I'd run for a particular distance (usually 2km) and then slow down to walk for a bit. I figured that there would be a marker for each kilometer of this run and that after I passed the 2km one I'd slow down and walk for a bit. Well, if there were markers for the 5km, I certainly didn't see them! There was markers for the half marathon, but it wasn't particularly useful to run past something saying 12km on a 5km run. Fairly early on I passed some event volunteers who were cheering us all on for having made it "over a kilometer already" but after that, the only time I knew where I was in the 5km was when I got the the sign saying "100m to go!"

Since I had no idea where the 2km point was, I was reluctant to slow down. I knew after the race I could look it up on the map, and that I'd be disappointed if I'd stopped running too soon. So I just kept on going until I got to what I thought was marking the half way point, and only then did I let myself slow down to a walk for a bit. Turns out I stopped running just slightly before the 3km point!!! I didn't want to walk for too long, so after a brief breather and a flick through my music to get some music to pump me up, I was off and running again. This time I ran a bit under 1km before slowing down to walk for a bit again. I'm pretty sure that all up I only walked for 500-600m of the race, which is pretty damn impressive!

After my second bout of walking, I realized I didn't have that much further to go, and I wasn't slowing down. When I got to the 100m mark I started to push myself even harder, even though by that point my hamstrings were tightening up and I was starting to get a side splint. There was just no way I wasn't going to finish the race strong! So I ran all the way through the blue finishing strip before I slowed down. Then it was all about finding the people handing out water and rehydrating. And getting my medal!

I had a friend running in the 5km as well, but I hadn't been able to find her at the starting line. Fortunately, we were able to find each other after the race and celebrate our ass kickingness with a bit of retail therapy, Japanese food, and beer. High on endorphines, we were all about doing the 10km next year. And you know what? Why not?! I had an awesome time running that 5km, and it just continued to be awesome as we wandered around the CBD with our medals while strangers congratulated us on our awesomeness.

But next year, Run Melbourne organizers, I think there needs to be some sort of a 'speed' dating thing set up based on our race numbers. Cuz seriously, there were some hotties out there! ;)

Not only was my first 5km race a big success, but so was my fundraising for Joni's Run For A Bike! I managed to raise $200 toward purchasing myself a bike, and $20 for a dog shelter from a friend who feels that if I want a bike I should "get a job." To everyone who has donated on my behalf, a big, heartfelt THANK YOU!!!! You're all awesome in my books!

Now for my next challenge: learning to ride a bike!

Waiting On My Spaceship

Lately I've had a lot of people telling me that, essentially, I'm amazing. Losing 26kg doesn't go unnoticed, or, if it does, you've seriously got to question who the people in your life are. And it's really nice to hear! I've spent a lot of time in my life being told I'm not good enough, so to have people tell me I'm inspiring, it feels pretty freggin' good. Yesterday I was at the gym and my personal trainer came up to me and told me that I'm doing amazing, and that even the other members were commenting on how well I'm doing. I mean, that's pretty awesome!

The only down side to this new found attention and admiration is that sometimes people just don't get it. These are the people who ask me how I've manged to lose so much weight and when I say, "I work really hard, every day" they just look at me blankly. Then they usually say how they wish they could lose weight too and start listing off a bunch of excuses for why they can't. I've never had a lot of patience for people's excuses. I was once at a craft store looking to buy a photo album for my pictures of my trip to Peru, and the sales associate said to me that she wished she could travel but she's got family, you know how it is. To which I dead pan replied: "Well, we've all got priorities." She didn't take that comment too kindly, which really is the stupidest thing of all because it's absolutely the truth: we've all got priorities. And for her, whatever "I've got family, you know how it is" means is more of a priority than travelling.

It's the same with weight loss and fitness. If you want to do it, you've got to make it a priority in your life. It doesn't necessarily have to be your #1 priority, but I reckon that if you're serious about it, it needs to be one of your top 5 priorities. Otherwise, it's not going to happen. You don't go to sleep every night wishing you could be something other than what you are, only to wake up one morning and find yourself magically transformed. Changing yourself takes hard work! The kind of hard work that I've seen hard working, motivated and determined people shy away from.

But here's the thing: yeah, it's really hard to transform yourself in some way. It doesn't stay hard though. It's not always a grueling process, and you don't always question why the hell you're putting yourself through the process. That's just how it starts. If you keep going with it, it really does get easier. And yes, that generally means it's time to challenge yourself harder, but you know what? Those challenges get easier to take on too.

A year ago if you had told me I had 3 weeks to train myself to run 5km, I would have probably spurted a fair number of obscenities at you. But today, I'm a week away from the race and in this morning's training session I ran 4 of my 5km, and then went to yoga, and have felt strong and energetic all day. It is a challenge to run 5km, but it's no longer a big one.

After I complete Run Melbourne, I am going to continue running. I'm not very fast, and I'd like to get fast. But for now I'm working on building up my strength so that I can run without injuring myself (the new shoes are making a world of difference on that front). I guess that's the thing that some people don't really understand: you can't just roll out of bed one morning and be able to do something you've never done before. You've got to work towards it. And that generally means taking the larger goal and breaking it down into smaller goals. Eventually, I'll be able to run fast because that is something that I want to accomplish and I am actively working towards it. In the meantime, I'm pretty damn stoked at myself for completing today's 5km run in 0:38:15. Since I'm no longer completely ceasing up and in pain after running, I'll be doing a lot of running this week to prepare myself for next Sunday's race.

There is something else frustrating about self transformation that I am probably more sympathetic about: it takes a lot of time. I'm not exactly known to be a patient person, so I definitely get the frustration at the fact that you can't just decide to work at something and accomplish it straight away. I certainly have learned to be a helluva lot more patient through my fitness journey - or at least to be patient with myself. I've stuck with it long enough to know that I will get the results I want if I keep at it, and that helps a lot. Because there are absolutely times where I just want to go full tilt into something, but I can't. Like with swimming. One spectacular day I beat my best time by 2 minutes. It was amazing! That was a month ago and all I've managed to do since is match my second best time, and that was with a great deal of effort.

Changing yourself involves taking a lot of baby steps, or at least it does if you want it to be lasting change. Which is what I have to remind myself of on a pretty regular basis, because I've secretly wanted to be this hard core athletic person for most of my life. And now that I'm closer than I've ever been to obtaining it, it can be really frustrating to think how much further I still have to go. But I'll get there, and I know that. I've worked way too hard and come way too close to accomplishing my goal to stop now!!

This might be a weird tangent to go on, but in my head the link makes sense. I was talking to one of my dearest and oldest friends this weekend about the trials and tribulations of life. Though me and her have different belief systems, we both think about our lives as constituting a narrative: we are the heroines of stories that someone else is writing. Maybe because we are both writers ourselves, we both struggle with the fact that we're not in on the plot line. It's like Stranger Than Fiction: we know that we are in a story, we know that someone else is telling the story, and we're not too happy about not having control over the outcome of the story.

I've been thinking about this a lot since our conversation, though I've thought about it a lot before then too. I absolutely believe that there is some greater force beyond myself that is, to some extent, directing my life. I'm just very reluctant to put a name to what that force may be and very hostile to the idea that somehow this force could be summed up through any one particular belief system (hence why the thought of being part of a religion makes me hiss and spit, and also why I find atheism incredibly reductionist). That being said, it's not like this force has complete control over what we do and that everything in our lives are predetermined. That's just ridiculous! Why would whatever force of the universe there may or may not be bother with having sentient life if only to predetermine every move they make? (Unless, of course, we aren't really sentient...)

I like to think about my life narrative as being of the choose-your-own-adventure variety. Of course, instead of having two choices to pick between to move the story forward, we sometimes can have infinite choices. I think about the mysterious workings of fate like a choose-your-own-adventure book because in those books, invariably there are certain events that you will end up at regardless of what path you take. That doesn't make the journey to those events pointless; quite the opposite! The journey we take to that destination will affect the decisions we make and the next path we take. The journey is, in fact, much more important than the destination.

The two of us are both dealing with one story line ending and the frustration of not knowing where the story is going to go from there. What I have learnt on my various journeys is that life will continue going on, no matter what, and that in time, a new plot line will reveal itself. So, as we both wait for that storyline where we get to enact our own version of Bridesmaids (great movie btw) we've got other story lines in our lives to develop. And who knows where the journey those take us on will lead?

Since my life story can essentially be told through Kanye West songs (seriously), I'll let Mr. West take us out again!

I don't ever wanna go back there so imma be taking no days off until my spaceship takes off.

Two Weeks To Go!

Eghads! There's only 2 weeks until Run Melbourne - 2 weeks to prepare myself to run 5km!!

So far the training is going well. The park near my place has a 1km track, so I've been running laps around that. And I'm quite happy with myself: yesterday I did 5km in 42 minutes, and I ran 3km of that. I had no idea how much running works your thighs and core, but holy crap! I'm having to do a lot of work to recover from running, in the form of yoga and swimming. But it seems to be working. The stiffness I felt after my Thursday run dissipated after my Friday swim, and doesn't seem to have returned after yesterday's run.

I've also invested in a new pair of running shoes, seeing as my old ones are starting to develop holes. I'm really looking forward to taking the new shoes out for a run! They're way more supportive than my old ones, and I always find there's something about new runners that just makes me run faster. Maybe I'll even finish the race in under 40 minutes! Maybe I'll even be able to run more than 3km of the race!

As for my attempt at fundraising for Joni's Run For A Car... well, I don't really need a car anymore. You see, I needed the car because of dating Lady Cop, but since we've broken up, having a car isn't really necessary anymore. So instead, I present to you...

Joni's Run For A Bike!!!

For those of you who don't know me so well, let me impress upon you what a big deal this is: I'm 28 years old and my knowledge of bike riding is entirely theoretical. That's right, I've never ridden a bike. I've resisted learning with Olympic strength stubbornness. But, more and more I have to admit to myself that having a bike would make my life a lot more convenient. And besides, what else am I going to do with the bike lock I've just been donated? So talk to me if you'd like to sponsor me in my run for a bike.

If you're wondering what the heck happened with me and Lady Cop, I think Kanye West sums it up best:

And I always find, yeah I always find something wrong
You've been putting up with my shit just way too long
I'm so gifted at finding what I don't like the most
So I think it's time for us to have a toast...

I won't say more on the matter. Instead, I'm off to do something I haven't done in a loooong time: drink some beer and shoot some pool!

Take us out Mr. West!