One Thousand Hits

I'm a bit overdue for my weekly post about my running adventures but I have been training hard, logging quite a few kilometres and have been working various shifts of late.

I am very excited to announce that last week my blog passed the 1,000 page-views milestone. I am amazed and humbled that so many of you read my posts. I regularly get messages and comments from people who tell me how much they look forward to reading about my running adventures. I enjoy writing about my running as it brings me much happiness and if I can entertain, inspire and encourage others out there to find and pursue their passion (whether it is running or something else) then I am achieving my goal.

The blog started out as a way for me to record my thoughts and reflections of training and racing. I record all my stats from my Garmin GPS on separate software but I thought that this would be a good honest way of recording all the 'behind the scenes' of my running. I have kept a hard copy diary in the past but found that difficult to keep updated. It is interesting to read what I have previously written and can be enlightening or embarrassing. In-particular my recent comments of retiring from Ultrarunning after my first DNF. I put it out there as a true and accurate record on how I felt at the time. But that is the beauty of free-will, we are free to change our minds at anytime and our destiny is the path we create. It may not be a smooth easy road all of the time and there are many intersections and detours along the way, but if we keep moving forward, enjoy our adventures, learn from our mistakes, and celebrate our achievements, we can be proud of ourselves as we are living a life worth living.

One of my running friends, Mat, also has a running blog and recently published a post which talked about some personal medical challenges he has been facing and another runner I know, Dean, is bravely supporting his daughter who is fighting cancer. Hearing and reading about these difficult life challenges again made me think about my own experiences and consider that there are so many people out there who are battling personal and life threatening illnesses and disasters. In my own life, my grandad died of bowel cancer, my younger brother had a heart attack when he was only 30 years old (thankfully he is as strong as an ox and is doing well now after having a stent surgically implanted) and my wife and I tragically lost our darling daughter Gemma who died of pneumonia and septic shock which was exacerbated with her condition - Prader Willi syndrome. Gemma died in 2004 aged 5 months and 1 day old. At the time Mel and I, together with our family and friends and daughter Holly, mourned and struggled through the re-building of our shattered lives. What I want to say is that life is short, it is not always easy so we should always remember to live life to the fullest, appreciate and be thankful for what we have, and plan for tomorrow but live for today. We should love and support those that are closest to us, avoid the things and people that would harm us and go after the things that we what, continually challenge ourselves, enjoy what we have, help those that have not and most of all, seek out our bliss and enjoy this life.

Sorry if I got a bit deep there but as I said above, I want to use this blog to record my feelings and emotions as well as my training and racing. I would like to thank you all again for your support in reading my blog. I encourage you to leave messages and become a follower either publically or anonymously. I intend to publish posts with a variety of subjects associated to running and will include a couple of book reviews in the coming weeks and months. I will include my weekly training updates but please let me know if there is anything particular you would like to read about and I will do my best to address it.

I would also like to mention that I am astounded by the people in overseas locations who read this blog. I can check the stats on this blog which tell me how many people read the blog and the country they are in at the time of accessing the blog. I acknowledge that some of the readers may have stumbled upon the blog unintentionally, by pressing the 'next blog' button, but still it is all very exciting. So far I have had readers from:

Australia
New Zealand
United States of America
United Kingdom
Germany
Poland
Malaysia
Singapore
Brazil
Estonia
Ireland
Czech Republic

Last weeks training was a bit of a mixed week. I ran the Monday after the 52km Flinders Tour but decided to have the Tuesday and Wednesday off. My legs were quite sore and I thought that I would have an easier week to help my recovery. I ran a long 45km run on the Saturday which was especially difficult. My legs were sore, I wore a backpack for the first time since TNF100 and I just didn't feel into it. I am proud of myself for pushing through and finishing the run and feel that it was good mental training to keep going. It is this mental training that I will need to draw upon for my future races, for the times when I am feeling down and struggling.

Weekly totals:

Monday - 8.05km - 47mins 20secs - Bush run with James & Troy
Tuesday - Day off
Wednesday - Day off
Thursday - 15.05km - 1hr 15mins 27secs - Undulating easy run
Friday - 18.82km - 1hr 37mins 47secs - Undulating run
Saturday - 45.05km - 4hrs 05mins 05secs - Long run with group
Sunday - 15.10km - 1hr 17mins 33secs - Undulating easy run

Totals: 102.08km - 9hrs 03mins 15mins

Stay tuned for my next post this Sunday or Monday including the big announcement of my next major race. Good luck to all of those running in either the Brisbane Marathon, Townsville Marathon or Cane to Coral this weekend. I hope you all achieve your goals and enjoy the journey along the way.

Keep running.