It’s been a loooooong time since I posted a race report. September 2012, in fact, for my half ironman.  And it’s been even longer since I reported on a running race.  Because I haven’t actually run a real running race since, uhm, Boston 2011.  And really, after last week’s rant on issues mostly unrelated to running I bet you’re all relieved to see me returning to talking about what this blog purports to be about – run Petra RUN! (And stop ranting!).

So this is a fresh one – I ran the Aldi Ashby 20M race today in Ashby-de-la-Zouche, Leicestershire (and yes that name seems weird to us in the UK as well).  It’s billed as the ultimate pre-London race and it is, in that by now everyone racing London is doing 20 mile runs and you might as well do them with water stations and company.  It isn’t great preparation in that it’s hilly which London isn’t. But I guess that means it’s harder than London in some respects, so that’s a good thing (ehmm).  Anyway.  I’ve done this race twice before (2009 and 2011) and each time I’ve really enjoyed it.  What I also really enjoy is that you get a hooded sweatshirt at the finish.  I know it’s not all about the goodie bag but when it’s a good one I’m happy.

Coming into this race I was feeling a bit jittery as my coach had set me a target time and pace – warm up for 2M, run 8M at 8:15 min/mile and then 8M at 8:00 min/mile, then 2M maybe a bit faster.  While I have run those paces as part of a long run, I have never run them for anywhere near those distances and I was feeling very nervous about it.  On the one hand I wanted to trust my coach but on the other hand I vividly remember trying to push too ambitious a pace on this course 2 years ago and coming completely unstuck.  I was internally dithering whether to follow her instruction or whether to run by feel and running the first two miles downhill in around 8:30 min/mile did not inspire me with confidence that I would be able to run much faster.  After 2 miles my Garmin beeped and within .2 of a mile it had started to beep at me that I was not on pace (I was heading uphill at the time).  I made the decision to switch off the planned workout and just run with speedy Sally as long as I felt able to.  I had been dreading this moment of abandoning my race plan for days and yet making that decision, so quickly into the race, felt like an enormous release.  The pressure was off.  And so we ran and ran and ran.  It started off dry but then it started raining. By mile 10 I could see the rain was freezing and soon it started to sleet and snow.  By mile 12 I lost Sal but by then I was in my zone – I felt myself running hard but just about hanging onto the pace.  I was trying to remember what I’d run at this race before (I thought it was 2:55) and thinking that, unless a disaster happened, I would beat my course record.  I ran past the point where the wheels came off in 2011 (it really stuck in my mind because I haven’t been here since) and felt great to be running strongly past it.  By mile 14 I had stopped looking at my watch – I could feel I was running hard and I didn’t feel I would be able to push any harder without risking a real slowdown before the finish.  Moreover, the strength and conditioning class I had taught on Thursday evening (with lots of squats, lunges, burpees and mountainclimbers) was making itself known – I have never had such painful and tightening hamstrings and glutes in a race before!  I was worried that if I pushed it any harder I would start cramping (though I have no idea whether that makes sense – I could just feel how painful and stiff and tight they were) and so I just hung in there.  The final 2 miles are uphill which was unwelcome but I made it across the finish, cold and wet and tired and sore, in 2:46: 52.

The only real downer of the day came when I was walking back to my car with two other runners and we got lost.  The elation of finishing soon wore off and I felt so cold and tired and sore.  We ended up having to climb over a few fences (a bit of a challenge after the race) to finally find our way to the carpark and our cars.  Where I, perhaps to the consternation of other runners, stripped down to my underpants to get my wet tights, socks and shoes off.  I was so cold I didn’t care and drove the whole way home with my seat heating blasting out and the car heating jacked to the max.

But the great news of the day came when I checked my previous race times while I waited for my bath to run – I have never run a 2:55 on this course, instead I ran 3:06:56 in 2009 and 3:07:36 in 2011.  So today was 20 minute course PR!  I am SO thrilled!  After all my jeremiads about getting older and slower it seems there is life in this old dog yet!  It’s particularly interesting because my coach has me on a much lower mileage plan than I was doing in those 2 years.  I rarely top 40M a week at the moment and was getting a bit concerned that I wasn’t doing enough.  But she’s very meticulous about my training and it seems the quality works!  The only other thing that is different from those years is that I am doing more strength work than I was doing then (I was doing NONE then) and I wonder whether that is keeping me stronger towards the end of a race?  It certainly made me stiff for this one – no more mountainclimbers before a long run – but it might improve my performance generally?

So much more to talk about and it feels weird to be posting something which doesn’t have much of my usual ponderousness in it but there you have it – when you’ve run as hard I did today it’s impossible to feel anything other than satisfied and tired.  And happily one-dimensional.

Oh man.  A part of me really regrets the post I put up a few days ago.  I’m ashamed and embarrassed about the self-pity I threw out there for everyone to see.  Sorry folks.  I thought about taking it down but your comments – I need to keep those up.  Up on the post, out there on the web, and right in front of me.  And they wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t had a public hissy fit, so my little tantrum will stay out there.  That’s right – you really get to see all of me – not just the pretty parts…

So you.  Onto you all.  I got fantastic comments on the blog, on FaceBook and also some private emails from people.  Thank you.  They felt like hugs – and some were – but there was also a lot of real, meaty advice in there that has helped, really helped me to progress mentally.

I realise, first off, that I am going to step away, for now, from focus on a PR or a specific time.  It induces anxiety (just a bit!) and more importantly, it’s actually counterproductive.  I spend so much time in my metaphorical bath stall crying and having my little panic tantrum that I’m not going to make it that I forget to just pay attention and get my training in.  Not that I haven’t been training – but I have not been focusing on that.  I have been focusing on my goal.  Not – as Ana Maria so succinctly puts it, focusing on the process.  The process is everything – it’s getting the runs right, it’s dealing with the challenges dealt by the weather, by flu, by fitting it around the rest of my life.  The result will then be what it is.  And ironically, the process is what I really enjoy.  Running here and now, the workouts ahead of me this week.  Building up the miles and the hard workouts, putting juice in my tank.  And then there is NOTHING I love more than race day, when I get to finally burn up ALL of that fuel that I have been storing, where I get to use ALL of my training miles, slow, fast, hard or easy.  And really and honestly – I know that once in that zone, I will run what I can run. And I will be completely filled up and fulfilled with that.

Another friend commented that “what we focus on, is what we become”.  I am still grappling with that one, but I can see that I have been too lazy, mentally, with my training.  I am being coached by my coach, Mary, and so am not in control of what I’m going to be doing, week on week.  She is. But I think that I’ve been, subconsciously, letting go of stuff I should have been in control of – while she tells me what my workouts are, I need to deliver – 100% – to make them count.  I need to be present – mentally – and not hand all control over to her.  I can’t just do the workout and then just moan and say “why did that not go so well?” I need to take ownership of my runs and figure out, every day, what the purpose of my run is and what I’m going to get out of it.  That purpose can be to improve my speed, my endurance, but also to improve my mood, or just to enjoy being outside, or feel empowered by battling the elements.  Point is – I need to take charge of those bits of the training I am in charge of.  Self-pity and the accompanying apathy (won’t someone help me?) has pervaded my training as well as my blog.

As to why I am so slow – in all my flapping around I have ignored the boringly prosaic reason my coach has been giving me for weeks – I am doing too much leg strength work with my clients.  I have got so used to working out with my clients that it is going to take more focus for me to help them, to demonstrate, but not to do the  repeated mountain climbers, burpees, squats and lunges I have been doing with them.  Because while all the triathlon stuff petered out last year, and the running stuff took up again, I have discovered – wait for it – strength! I have never done weights in a gym or in a class until this last year and only really have started doing it because I ended up volunteering to teach a strength and conditioning class for my triclub.  Fed up with my procrastination about my business, I decided that I would just do this – these two things that scare me, teaching and strength – because I was so bored of my own whinnying about it.  And I know, I know, colour you surprised, but I have started enjoying it.  Teaching, and strength work!  My once weekly class is a cross fitty / tabata styled workout which has pushed me way beyond what I thought I could do, physically and mentally.  But in enjoying that I have not considered fully how that class, on top of the one on one sessions I do with clients, affects my running.

Having a week off this week – because I cancelled everything – has given me the chance to really consider what I can do to put all my eggs in my running basket – to focus on the process of training:

• I will consider how my work affects my training and adapt in a way that does not take away from my clients’ experience but means that I do fewer workouts myself;
• I will give some extra time to each workout, every day, separate from setting it up on my Garmin or driving there, to consider what I’m doing the workout for, and what I’ve taken away from it;
• I will take rest and nutrition and recovery seriously.

Finally – I got a message last night from an old friend who knows me from way back at university, when I smoked and drank and could barely run down the hall and then later, when I was overweight and so unhappy with how I looked and felt; “I think you are focusing too much on your PRs and not the whole journey you have traveled. 8 years ago this summer I visited you and you told me you were unhappy with you baby weight and you were going to run a marathon (I do recall a pair of bribery shoes from Adam may have been involved). You have done that and then some more.” This was powerful stuff – she reminded me of where I came from and why I came to running.  And then she tells me “you are the inspiration that leads me to believe I too can do a marathon.” Ok. I get it.  I’m opening the curtains, tidying up the pity party streamers, and getting my head straight.  In focus.  Thank you everyone!

 

I’m 10 weeks away from the London marathon.  I’ve done just over a month of consistent marathon training after taking 3 weeks off at Christmas.  Before that I worked on a decent build-up to marathon fitness.  But oh – the wind has been in my face this past month, figuratively and literally, when it comes to running.

No surprises here but the weather has not been amazing.  The cold is not so bad, though ice and snow have slowed my pace.  As soon as the temps rise a bit round here, the wind starts blowing.  It’s been so windy I have literally been blown off the road recently and again, this has made paced work difficult.

More than that though, I have been mentally feeling the wind in my face about running recently.  I have been so determined to be consistent with my training and I would say I am getting about 90% of my runs in.  But ugh.  They are slow.  I am slow.  I keep thinking back to what has become, in my head, the season of my life – 2009, when I trained with the Pfitzinger / Douglas book for the first time and PRed by 25 minutes in the London Marathon and then BQed, despite spending time in the medical tent, at Berlin.  I didn’t start that season off superfit and so, at the beginning of this month, I assuaged my doubts about starting the season off a 3 week break by telling myself I could easily get back in shape.  But I don’t feel I am making much progress.  I am slow.  My longer runs are hard.  I don’t feel my pace picking up – at all.  And to top things off – and I really am feeling sorry for myself now – I’ve got the flu.  I tried to ignore it yesterday and go out for a 15 miler but had to concede at 8 miles when I felt the chills and the pounding headache – I ran home and got into bed.  Where I have been ever since.  I am doping myself up, giving myself plenty of rest and fluids and hoping that I will be well enough to run the Stamford St. Valentine’s 30km race next Saturday.

But my head is filled with gremlins right now.  I think “how am I going to run 30km?  The longest I’ve run this cycle is 13M and that was painfully slow?”.  I think “I’m never going to get another PR”.  What has been eating away at me for some time now is a conversation I had with another runner.  We met a mutual friend’s party and got talking about running.  She asked me about my PB and when I told her she turned to me and said “I’m going to have to beat that time now”.  In all seriousness.  I really don’t think she meant this in any way as a challenge to me – I think this is just the kind of person she is – competitive.  She is very successful in her field and clearly wants to do well in everything she does.  Admirable stuff.  But I’m really uncomfortable with competition.  Really uncomfortable.  Maybe it is because I never competed as a child.  In any sport.  I took part, sure, but never ever was in the running.  Those type A competitive girls didn’t even register my presence.  My honest instinct, when somebody is openly competitive like that?  Is to pull out. Which I know is a crappy response.  I should either rise to the challenge, or not care.

I want to not care.  I want to not care that my runs are so slow.  And in a sense, I don’t.  When I’m out there running on my own, I’m happy.  I’m enjoying just running, haven’t missed the bike and am happy with my once weekly swimming lessons.  But when I start talking to others, I do care.  I feel enormous pressure to PR and to be constantly better than before.

So my wise running friends – help me.  Send me some words of wisdom. I don’t usually end my blogs with a question but I genuinely want to know from you all – how do you cope with not getting PRs?  What do you do when you’re just slow? How do you cope with competition?  How do you handle this and maintain a sense of enjoyment away from your times and paces? 

Yes, my trip to Indonesia was everything I could have hoped it would be.  It was amazing.  Those of you who are my friends on FaceBook have had the opportunity of seeing 100s of photos of our trip.  We had a fantastic time.  Trekking around 4 islands in Indonesia with 2 children was not always for the faint of heart – there were some early morning getting to train stations, some hot waits for rickety boats on a beach and packing 4 people up every 2 or 3 nights is not something I’m great at. And 4 strong-willled individuals who were in each other’s company for virtually every minute for 3 weeks did occasionally disagree – but overall it was great.

I set out, in part, to show my husband and kids where I was from. And I did that, and I think that worked.  But the trip proved about so much more than that – so much of the experiences were new to me as well and so having this incredible experience together with my husband and kids was an very bonding thing to do.  My advice to you would be just do it.  Take your kids and go travel.  Be adventurous!  It will work out and you will all gain enormously from it!

For the first time in years I did not finish a holiday ready to go home.  There is so much more to see in this huge friendly beautiful country and we will definitely be back to explore more.

An added bonus of being away for 3 whole weeks over Christmas and New Year is that you kind of miss the holiday season.  And if that makes me sound like the grinch – well, I guess I’m kind of turning into one about Christmas.  I mean it is, seriously, so much hard and thankless work and I did not miss it. At all.  No trips to hysteria-inducing packed supermarkets with lists as long as my arm, no constant assault of boxes from Amazon, no hours of cooking – none of it.  Not to mention the lounging around waiting for Christmas to begin, the crap on tv that everyone insists on watching and ugh.  I know.  I am the grinch.  I’ve already promised my kids we’ll be home for Christmas next year and I will do all the big and little things I need to do to feel like a good mother creating memories for her offspring but in the meantime – man! This was good!  We had pizza on Christmas day!  We swam and sunbathed and read and had smoothies.  None of which I shopped for, prepared or cleared away.  It was Christmas for me, definitely.  And New Year was the same – we went to bed before midnight (after a new year’s eve buffet which featured – bizarrely – turkey!) to get up in time for an elephant ride. 

But I did miss out on resolutions, and I love resolutions.  I’ve been trying to catch up on all of your blogs (still a work in progress) and I know that not everyone likes resolutions but I do.  I like them at New Year, I like them at Easter, I like them in November – the act of resolving is an act I like.  And while I used to beat myself up for putting some resolutions on my list year after year without actually doing them, the benefit of getting older is that I see that I tend to eventually get round to doing what I resolve.  Some things just seem to take years to germinate.  So my resolutions for 2013:

• to dare greatly.  I think many of us lose the confidence to try something we’re not sure will work.  Fear of failure gets in the way of trying things.  I don’t want to do that – I want to be bold and brave and pick myself up after I fall and try something else.
• to train intelligently.  This is one of those resolutions I make again and again but I’m just going to hammer it until it sinks in.  So yes to rolling and stretching and core strength and strength strength (and I am actually doing those last 2 now so that has finally sunken in) and to seeing the osteopath before I get injured.  Yes to backing off if I feel a niggle rather than persevering until it’s an injury.  Yes to good food and good rest.
• to be kind to myself. Not to let myself off the hook when I need to haul myself up, but to stop beating myself up over stuff I shouldn’t beat myself up over, to be a little less harsh on myself .  Maybe to be a little less quick to judge – myself and others.

That will do – won’t it?  And so, in the spirit of that last resolution I won’t be downhearted or dispirited by the fact that 3 weeks of not training (gaawwd! Can you believe that?) have made my first week of training slow.  Heartrate high, pace slow.  I will have faith in my coach, who says it will come back, and stick to the plan.  2013 is my year of running and I’m loving it!

Once again it has been forever since I’ve blogged.  I’ve just been uninspired.  No excuses, no big reason, I’ve been running yadda, yadda, yadda – it’s just all been a bit meh.  And I’ve felt a bit meh.  And who wants to read that?  I didn’t even want to write it.

But I love new beginnings and before I can get there – bring on 2012 – I think I need to see out 2012 and just bullet-point some highs before packing it up and archiving it.  As far as I’m concerned, my new year starts Saturday.

• the Olympics.  Are you kidding me?  It was awesome, wasn’t it?  Being in London for some of it was truly memorable, sharing that experience with my kids and parents and husband and best friend and family – totally unforgettable.
• my half iron distance race.  I signed up for this race as a huge big crazy challenge, unable to swim competently for 25 metres and with zero biking skills.  A massive learning curve meant a training cycle that was, for me, unprecedented in its ups and downs, but on the day the sun shone (a rare enough occurrence this year) and the gods conspired and it all came together.
• my triathlon club.  For years I have struggled to find a club I fit in with but over the past year this club has been fantastic.  Not only have I learned to swim with the best swimming coach I’ve ever known of, but I’ve got to know a large number of welcoming people who have helped me with training questions, gone on bike rides with me, helped me with my endless questions about setting up and transitions at races, cheered me on as I raced and recently, taken me on a crazy-ass off-road race which I was totally unprepared for!
  

  Caroline, Liz and I looking remarkably clean after our run. You can’t see below the knees in this shot!

• teaching.  Ooof this is a biggie.  I am still kind of nervous to write this down and make it public but I am enjoying teaching a class.  An exercise class!  This was utterly terrifying to me when it was first proposed but I just held on the feeling that it could not be as bad as I feared it would be.  After a shaky start (no participants turned up on the first night) and a few sessions where I struggled with the format we’ve persevered and now I’m actually looking forward to the sessions and loving it.  Somewhat unbelievable to me but there you go – I think I’m going to carry on doing this thing!
• returning to running. My trial separation from running worked a treat – I loved it and missed it and was all fired up to go back to it.  In the past few months I’ve been slowly working my way towards (a bit of) speed again and it’s been fantastic and enjoyable.  Minor injuries aside (same old )(*(&*^*&^*T knee stuff that happens to me every time I push myself) I’m well back on the road.

And as for my new year starting on Saturday, as some of you may know my husband, children and I are going to Indonesia for 3 weeks on Saturday.  I wasn’t sure whether to post about this – I know this is a tough time for so many people, financially and emotionally at Christmas: do you really want to hear about someone’s great trip?  But I’ve decided I want to explain why this trip is so meaningful to me.  You see, 30 years ago my family (parents, younger brother and I) left Indonesia, where we had lived for 5 years, to return to Holland (where we’re from) and it’s only in recent years that I’ve come to see how much those 5 years influenced my life.  We moved there when I was 6, after 3 years of living in Tanzania and Sri Lanka, and it was the place I came into my own.  Before moving to Bandung, in Indonesia, I had rarely been to school and had spent the vast majority of time with my parents and brother.  In Bandung I started school, I learned English, and I learned to read.  It was like a perfect storm – at 6 years old (and bear this in mind when we nowadays push our kids to perform socially and academically from a much younger age) I took off like a rocket.  I learned to speak English in record time, started a book-reading habit that endures to this day and that has got me through every tough patch I have ever endured, and I made friends and learned to be a social creature.  I truly think that what is good about me and what is me about me started to flower out there.  Once back in Holland, losing English proved a massive loss – I felt like half the person I had been until that point – and much of my teens was spent striving to get out to the English speaking world.  It was not until I went to university in the UK and could express my bilingual self that I flowered again.  I have lived in England for most of my life now and sound like a native.  But I’m not, and I want to show my husband and children where a big part of me comes from.  The smells, the sounds, the heat, the rain, the sun, the volcanoes, the exploding cities and deserted beaches – all of that shaped an important part of me and I cannot wait to share some of that with my family.

So we’re off on a big adventure – just the 4 of us.  I’ll post some pictures on FaceBook and will blog about it when I come back.  I’ll no doubt run out there.  I’m off-schedule – I want to do what I want to do when I’m out there and if it means I can’t train for London for as long as I’d like, so be it.  The London marathon will come round again and this trip won’t.  I can’t wait to see what this trip shakes loose in all of us.

Have a wonderful holiday and a fantastic 2013!

What Petra did next?  Oh – the rest of her life.  Because it turns out I kind of left that for a while.  While I was beating myself up over the summer for not putting enough emphasis on my training (and it’s true, I could have trained harder) it appears I left a lot of other stuff undone. My inbox could have choked a donkey.  Paperwork everywhere.  Things I really should have dealt with, not dealt with.  Not in a haha way,  but in a “oh crap how could I have left that for so long kind of way”.  And worse.  So I have spent the past 4 weeks catching up.

The period after a big race is always a tricky one.  I find myself going up and down emotionally – casting about, I suppose, because the big goal is gone. One of the phases I go through is immediately trying to find a new goal. People keep suggesting them to me and I’ve said yes to an unfeasibly large amount of things which I have absolutely no realistic chance of doing.  I’ve said yes to doing the half iron again next September, to various shorter distance tris, I’ve even said yes to the Chicago marathon.

What I should remember (oh the things I should tattoo on my forehead!) is that I have a habit of crowd sourcing when I’m unsure about my next direction and it’s a habit I should break.  Not that listening to others is  bad idea but in my case I tend to forget to listen to myself.

Because when I shut off the chatter – and FaceBook and the Internet which is often just that – what do I really feel?

• I feel that I had a great day out there doing the half iron.  The best possible day.  The conditions were fantastic and I just enjoyed it.  Even when it hurt I was happy and proud and pleased.
• I don’t feel the need to do it again.  Maybe I will someday and then I will do it again.  But right now it feels like a box ticked.  Something I can move on from.
• I have not been on my bike since the race.  I walk past it about 30 times a day but all I think when I see it is “no”.  I don’t know why – I just never enjoyed the bike rides that much and I don’t think I ever wanted to acknowledge that.  I’d be all up for cycling to somewhere but a bike race?  No thank you.

But the whole putting off the rest of my life bit has given me another, and a bit more disturbing,  insight into myself. I have set goals before and have been training for marathons on and off for the past 7 years.  I have never put off or ignored as much of the rest of my life as I did in this training cycle.  I turned training for this half ironman race into a great big test of myself.  In the past, when I’d miss a workout I’d feel bad, but move on.  But in this training cycle it was all much bigger.  If I missed a workout, it was proof that I was, somehow “not good”.  Getting it right meant I was “good”.  Whatever “not good” and “good” mean – I realise that I made this whole thing too much of a judgment on myself.  I’ve pulled out of marathons before because of sickness or injury but I could never have pulled out of this event – that would have been a massive indictment on me.  By me. And now I’ve actually realised that, I’m horrified.  I’ve pulled some crazy stuff before, but this is the limit even for me.

So I’m having some stern talks with myself.  I don’t believe this ridiculous pressure was somehow “because of” triathlon.  I think it’s a reflection of where I am in life – my own warped version of a midlife crisis.  Because I was (and am) struggling to find some direction for myself in the rest of my life this goal became it all.  I had to get this right because I didn’t feel I was doing so great elsewhere.  And that is ridiculous and doesn’t solve anything.

So now here I am, it’s early October and these are my goals:

• to train for London, finally get UNDER 3:45 for a marathon and BQ.  If London is not my day, I will get it elsewhere.  But I’m going to work very hard for this.
• I’m staying with my wonderful coach / psychologist / straight talker Mary.  Having her tell me what to do takes an enormous amount of guesswork and pressure off me.
• to do something different next autumn (September, October, November).  I’m thinking an ultra.  I’m thinking an ultra in the US.  I’m thinking 50M.  So I’m crowdsourcing this one people – any recommendations?  I don’t mind hills but probably should not start in the Rockies as I train at sea level.  Let me have your thoughts.
• and I’m going to let myself off the hook.  I’m going to see what happens to my life if I don’t push it so hard in one direction.  And I’m going to listen to myself – really listen to myself.  Amanda has been an inspiration with her journaling and I think it will help.

So there you have it people – the plans for 2012 / 2013.  Help me stay on course!

And finally – the rewards of blogging!  Maritza and I met through blogging and hearing about each other on podcasts years ago – we ran together for the first time when I visited the Bay Area in 2008 and have stayed in touch since.  She visited London for work last week and I came to London to meet her – it was wonderful to connect and see her and meet her lovely boyfriend Mario.

The fantastically-abbed, incredbly warm-hearted treadmill runner extraordinaire Emz tagged me.  And where Emz goes I follow.  At some distance behind her, but still..

Emz and I in Boston 2011.  Yes I was starstruck.

The Liebster Award is given to upcoming bloggers who have less than 200 followers. (Upcoming blogger? Not sure about that  – I think I have been at this thing so long that all my followers have dropped me.  But I’ll take all the help I can get). 

The meaning: Liebster is German and means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome. (I’m a sucker for being called these things so here’s me jumping off a cliff for an award).

Rules for receiving this award:

1. Each person must post 11 things about themselves.
2. Then answer the questions the tagger sent for them, plus create 11 questions for the people they’ve tagged to answer.
3. Choose 11 people and link them in your post.
4. Notify the people you have tagged.
5. No tag backs. 😉

So here goes – 11 things about me:

1.  I love reading.  I devour novels.  I read while I was in labour, I balanced books on my babies’ heads while I fed them, I read in cars, in the bath, on the toilet, in bed.  Highbrow, lowbrow, middlebrow – it’s the oxygen for my life.
2. I’m finding the cycling bit of triathlon surprisingly tough.  I can ride a bike, I can clip in (and out, most of the time), I can handle myself in traffic – but I find it hard to really push myself.  If I don’t commit to my ride and to really go for it, I find my heart rate dropping to a corpse-like pace.  I’m beginning to realise that all of those who have been riding bikes well and hard for some time have a bit of head start on me.
3. I’m a sucker for a dare.  It’s very immature but I just cannot help myself.  This weekend we were in the lake district and climbed a mountain near the Honister Pass.  To quote from Wikipedia, ” [it] reaches an altitude of 1,167 feet (356 m), making it one of the highest in the region, and also one of the steepest, with gradients of up to 1-in-4 (25%)”.  We saw some crazy-ass professional looking cyclists heaving their way up this pass and the idea burned into my head that I should try this.  I discussed this stupid idea with a couple of my friends who I was there with, most of whom are experienced cyclists.  They all said it was “in the mind” and I figured I have a mind like a steel trap, so why not have a go?  I had a 3 hour bikeride on the books on Sunday and so, hey presto, Sunday morning saw me cycling to the Honister Pass.  It’s pretty up and downy on the way there and I was fine with that.  After a while there is less vegetation and this is where I started to talk to myself (“it’s all in the mind, you’re strong, you can do this, imagine how great you’ll feel, yadda yadda yadda”).  And then I hit the first bit where the gradient is 25%.  OH MY LORD!  I was hanging on for dear life, terrified the bike would flip backwards with the pressure I was exerting on the handlebars, I was in my smallest gear and could barely get my pedals round and all I was thinking was “[insert swearword] I won’t be able to clip out if I get into trouble”.  I couldn’t stop myself all I could think of was clipping out.  And I managed.  So there I was on this )(*(*&*&^*&% incline out of the saddle.  And then all I could think was “man the [insert swearword] up Petra!  What the )(*(*&*&^ is going on here? Get back on your )(*(&^*%^ bike!”.  So I managed to get back on which was no mean feat on that incline.  And I pushed on and up.  And then, I was nearly at the top and I was going so slowly (and grinding my pedals SO hard, and my heart rate was off the chart) and then I hit a pothole.  And fell.  Not very hard, as I was going so slowly.  And then I could not get back on again, it was just too steep.  So I walked my bike the last minute or so to the top.  Where I was faced with my next dilemma – how in the (*(*& was I going to get down this pass?  It was absolutely hideous.  I squeezed my brakes with everything I had and slowly made my way down, imagining all the while what would happen if I came off the road (not impossible as it was v narrow and the cars were wedging past me) and just hoping and praying I’d make it to the bottom and telling myself I was fool to take on the dare.  By the time I got to the bottom of the hill my spirit was broken.  I was berating myself for being such a fool, for even trying this dumb thing, for ALWAYS rising to a dare.  Even if I’m daring myself.  My legs and arms were broken too – it was all I could do to get back to our holiday cottage….  I’m okay today.  Going for a very flat run this evening…
4. I’m Dutch but have been living in England for longer than I’ve lived anywhere else and the Olympics have proven to me that I now feel culturally British.  I’m going to get that passport sorted!
5. I’d like to be organised but am not.  I read Real Simple instead of organising my paperwork and photos.
6. I hate – absolutely loathe – board games.  And card games.  On the very rare occasions that I play a game with my kids I feel I should be given a free pass straight into Mother heaven as I feel I am making the most enormous sacrifice.
7. On the other hand, I love building Lego.
8. My go-to Karaoke song is “Don’t Rain on my Parade”.
9. My favourite food is mexican food.  I love Wahaca. 
10. I also adore Sushi.  Japan is the next country I’d like to visit.
11. I’m so not done with goals and challenges.  In the next 10 years I’d like to learn how to surf, improve my skiing, learn Japanese, improve my handling of personal finances and find a good yoga teacher.  Among other things.

Okay – my questions from Emz are:

1. Favorite social media? Facebook.  I have too much to say for Twitter.
2.  Favorite post workout meal? Big salad with chicken and avacado and nuts and seeds and all sorts of delicious stuff thrown in.
3.  Clean the house or do yard work? Clean the house.
4.  Favorite gift you’ve ever received? Beautiful painting from Adam for my 40th.
5.  Do you look most like your mom or dad? Like my mother, I think, though I don’t really think I look that much like either of them. 
6.  If you could go any where in the world – where would you go? Japan – see above.  But I’m also desperate to go back to the US to see friends.  Do I have to choose? 
7.  Workout alone or with a group? Alone… 
8.  Favorite song at the moment? Call Me Maybe. I know, I know.  I’ve never been very edgy. 
9.  Three qualities of your best friend.  Honest, funny, loyal. 
10.  Favorite Olympic event?  10000m.  Strategy.  And seeing Tirunesh Dibaba win with such joy was great.
11.  Why did you start blogging? Because I was the only person I knew who wanted to talk and hear about running, and I wanted to hear about others who loved it.  It’s changed my life, brought me new friends and a new career.  I’m not stopping!

My questions for the tagged ones?  I’m sorry this makes me feel like I’m writing an article in some teen magazine but go for it..

1. What is your next big goal / challenge?
2. What language would you like to learn to speak?
3. Which book has most inspired you?
4. What is the one thing you’d like to do but are afraid to try?
5. Best moment in the 2012 Olympics?
6. Favourite cuisine?
7. To what extent is your lifestyle shaped by the exercise / sport you do?
8. Has your exercise / sport affected your diet?
9. What is your favourite post-race treat – food or otherwise?
10. Which bloggers inspire you?
11. If you’re not my FB friend, will you friend me now?

And here’s my tagged ones.  Oh man – I hate this – it’s like picking your favourite child – but this is just a sampling.  And some of you have way more than 200 followers – I know that.  But do it if you can – it’s bound to be fun reading…

• Amanda
• Susan
• Jill
• Rebecca
• 21st Century Mom
• Pensive Pumpkin
• Dorry
• Lindsay
• Mary
• Jeanne
• Susan

Good lord that took a while!  Hope you all have fun doing it!