Cancer Society of New Zealand

It been just over 3 years now since my Dad died...he spent the last 18 months of his life suffering greatly as a result of Cancer.

He was diagnosed in February 2005, and on the 5 May 2005 he had is first surgery in an attempt to remove the tumour. The reason I remember the date is because my son Matthew was born on the 2 May. Dad was so excited about the birth of his new grandson he jumped on a plane and within hours he was in Auckland. I’ll never forget how happy he was holding his new grandson, it made me feel happy that we could provide the distraction he needed....he was scared.

Over the next 18 months he underwent the usual treatments of chemo, radiation, more surgeries etc... it was truly devastating watching the man I looked up to shrivel away to a frail & lifeless shell of the man he once was. Throughout this 18 months my mother soldiered on, providing her undivided care & attention on him. Mum is a stoic and private person and is not good at asking for help, but without the assistance of the Cancer Society of New Zealand she would not have been able to provide that level of care that she did. We as a family will be forever grateful to them.

Now, If that hasn’t brought a tear to your eye, you better check yourself for a heartbeat.

As you will all know I am going to the big island of Hawaii in 47 days, to take part/race in Kona - 2009 World Ironman Championship, and my aim is to raise $5000 for them.

To donate please visit my fundraising page. I am happy to accept any reasonable challenge . FYI - I met every single challenge at Ironman NZ.

Thanks Cancer Society of New Zealand

Get more go on Moro...

When you literally spend your whole Sunday on the bike you need fuel...and plenty of it. My latest craving has been for the good old Kiwi Moro bar. This little piece of Kiwiana has been made even more enticing with Cadbury’s generous ‘1 in 5 wins a Freebie’ deal that they have going at the moment.

This competition is a blessing for my Moro craving and is a bloody good thing too, because of the eight....yes, eight I have had in the last 9 days six of them have been FREE!

Craig Kirkwood = 6

Michael Kelly = 0

Mate I love free stuff...Thanks Cadbury

Art

I believe training the body to its optimum is a form of art...of sorts. It takes time, patience, skill, hard work, perseverance...and often you and others don’t appreciate what you’ve achieved until it’s all over. The art is in the balance between being a big softy and not doing enough, to being a hard arse and doing too much. I like to think that I push the envelope of the later, although some may disagree. Therefore for me the balance between doing enough and overdoing it something that I like to test in an attempt to push the boundary further and further away than what would be perceived as normal. There are a few people that I have had the pleasure of being involved with over the years that have left me with a couple of key memories that have help me mould this ability.

• In 2001 I was training for my first marathon (London), and at one point during the training I was fried. When I spoke to my coach at the time, the legendary Alan Storey, about it he simply said ‘Kirkwood, you’re in a hole, so stop f..... digging!’ - simple, but perfect.
• Right before that first marathon I was speak with one of Britains greatest marathon runners, Jon Brown (4th Olympic marathon 2000 & 2004), about racing a marathon, his advice was ‘the 1^st time you want to go (meaning pick up the pace), don’t!, the 2^nd time you want to go, don’t!, the 3^rd time you want to go, you won’t be able to’ - so true
• Earlier this year when I was training for my first Ironman, my coach Uncle Wattie (Mark Watson) and I were talking about racing the Ironman or more specifically the ride and he said ‘every 20km or so of the ride, do a mental check and ask yourself the question ‘can I still run a fast marathon after x km at this effort?’’ – so valuable

The real art to all of this is learning what you are capable of and where your boundaries lay, then have the courage and the skills to push that boundary without destroying yourself in the process. If you can't master that technique then you’ll never really discover your true potential.

This is different form of art; maybe Blue seventy can make this into a swim skin.

Now the reason for all of this babble is that in the last two weeks I feel that I have pushed a boundary in my training, and have nudged myself up to another level. All three disciplines are on going very well, and I am feeling confident. I am training well and I feel like I am recovering very well from the volume and intensity I am putting in...and yes Alan I am making sure the hole isn’t getting too deep. I think I can put this down to 3 main elements

1. Well structured training programme - thanks wattie

2. Nutrition & hydration - Part of my nutrition is a daly intake of Resveratrol which I think is really aiding my recovery - thanks About Health.

3. Weekly Massage - thanks Kylie (Bay Massage Therapy)

Whatever it is...I like it.

Work-Life Balance

Can you believe the NZ Department of Labour has a section on their website dedicated to work-life balance.

'Work-life balance is about effectively managing the juggling act between paid work and other activities that are important to us - including spending time with family, taking part in sport and recreation, volunteering or undertaking further study. Research suggests that improving the balance between our working lives and our lives outside work can bring real benefits for employers and employees. It can help build strong communities and productive businesses.'

And according to Ezibuy, my July horoscope ‘The key to not only surviving this month but thriving, using any pressure to your advantage and as a means to achieve a breakthrough, is finding the right work/life balance.’

I can hear you asking ‘who gives a shit Craig, what is this all about?’ Well good question.

Many of you will know that I do lead an reasonably busy life – I have a full time job, I have a young family, I am training for Kona, I coach runners and I have a part time job. Believe me when I tell you that these responsibilities/undertakings take some balancing. The catalyst for this blog was that I had my work review on Wednesday, and as with any review you get both positive reinforcement for your good performances and ‘constructive criticism’ for your failings. One of my ‘constructive criticisms’ was that I need to work on my work life balance. Now I am not into Horoscopes into a big way or anything, but I am a Libra (or the Scales) and I have always thought that I do pretty damn good job at balancing activities in my life....apparently I could do better!

Libra Traits

Diplomatic and urbane
Romantic and charming
Easygoing and sociable
Idealistic and peaceable

Interestingly, these are Some of the negative Libra traits – I can also see these in myself.

Indecisive and changeable
Gullible and easily influenced
Flirtatious and self-indulgent

After pondering this information for a good 48hrs now I have determined that although it is true that I do get distracted from time to time, I think they are wrong. I believe I do a fine job, there are only so many hours in a day, and I think I use 90% of them wisely. Btw I am writing this blog while my work mates are having a coffee break....slackers.

Kona 2008

Very cool video of Kona 2008

Confusing abilty with ambition...

Well it’s been a while since my last post, but to be fair I have been very busy. Work has been full on and as my training is ramping up I in preparation for Kona I seem to have less and less time to sit put my thoughts into script.

I must say that I am little....no actually I am a lot over winter. It’s been tough to get on the bike during all of our cold wet weekends, thankfully I have a understanding wife who tolerates my wind trainer whirring in the lounge in the evenings as we both watch Le Tour replay. Last Sunday I rode 100km into a nasty cold southerly headwind...it was miserable. I was so relieved to get off my bike and into the car. My pesky calf has finally come right and I am now running 60min plus...this is a huge relief, because I felt that I was less prepared for the run at IMNZ than I would have liked....I was prepared to be beaten by Cameron, but I was a bit gutted that Terenzo ran faster than I did. I now have plenty of time to get myself into some decent marathon form before I can take it to those Euro & Nth American Tri fags in Kona.

One thing that does continue to baffle me about triathletes is that their lack of reality in their ability at each of the three of the disciplines (sorry if you’re offended...actually no I’m not haha)...and a great example of this is Rasmus Henning, last week on the IMTalk Podcast (week 168) he was asked in a interview what he thinks he could run for a marathon - ‘i could run around 2:12’ was his reply, I nearly fell off my chair with laughter, but do you know the worst part!? (rhetorical of course) The interviewers (who are experienced multisporters and should know better), didn’t even question his outrageous claim. I was miffed at their lack of knowledge....so I did some research (then emailed them...I’ll probably get slagged off this week). There is no denying that Rasmus is a class athlete, and that he has had a stellar ITU carreer, and has made an exceptional start to his IM career with a debut win at IM China, but he ain’t no 2:12 marathoner. Just as an aside the Danes haven’t had anyone run sub 2:13 for 20 years.

2:12 - wake up dreamer

Anyway this outrageous claim has given me to a new goal for Kona - I want to smash his run time.

On the mend

I am pretty excited that my calf muscle has improved to the point that I am now planning on running tomorrow. In my experience a calf muscle take between 5-6 weeks to come right, and I think by the time I am able to run for a solid 45min it will have been 6 weeks since I was i..... It'll be a very slow and very short jog tomorrow. I think I’ll start with a 5min walk, 2min jog, 1min walk, 2min jog. If that goes well, i'll go 5min walk, 5min jog, 1min walk, 5min jog on Thursday.

This time off running hasn't been a complete dead loss though as I have used this time to get my bike miles up and work on my swimming. My swimming has improved in leaps & bounds since Ironman NZ, and I feel like I am now swimming more efficiently; I am defiantly swimming faster. My riding has also come along nicely, and I am now feel like I am riding more smoothly and can hold a decent tempo for longer. Although I did suffer a mechanical meltdown on Sunday, when my rear tyre was shredded by some little pricks broken beer bottle. I had to call a Kylie to come and pick me up. This leads me to my questions for this week;

Should Beers & RTDs be bottled in plastic or glass? I vote plastic

Now don’t get me wrong, I like a nice cold beer (or 2) from a glass bottle like any kiwi bloke, however every time some loser throws an empty from his car on to the road and I run over it, it costs me money. I counted up the patches on one of my tubes last night and it had 6 patches on it. Imagine if I’d purchased a new tubes every time that happened – it’d would have cost me $110 on that tube alone. It's a good thing I find patching tubes therapeutic.

Frustrating