Yes indeedy!  I’ve placed my order so it’s official – I’m about to become a goddess!

Ange, this is a pointer just for you!  I’ve discovered a trader on TradeMe who is selling hair straighteners.  Check out her feedback – at the time of posting, she had 318 100% positive feedbacks, many claiming that the straighteners are better than GHDs.  I did a bit more investigating, and they’re actually RKs (Richard Kavanaghs), and if you do a review search on his straighteners, they do actually rate consistently the same, if not better than GHDs.  The best bit is that I bid on a $1 reserve auction for a set, and ended up getting them for just $57!  The Richard Kavanagh site sells them for $149 (includes an instructional DVD, just like GHDs do).

So if you ignore the tacky blurb on her ads, it would appear the straighteners are a damn fine buy.  The ones I bought should be here tomorrow, then I’ll be having a mega play!  Okay, maybe I won’t look like a goddess, but I so want the gorgeous silky hair that I left the hairdresser with on Friday!

Training Update

I ended up having quite a big weekend, and just a week after a Half IM – I was well impressed with my efforts!  Well, it doesn’t sound like much, but the legs felt it by the end of yesterday (Sunday).  To recap, I had my six hour ride/15 minute brick on Friday, Saturday I had a 90 minute ride and a 45 minute OW swim, and Sunday I did a 2.5 hour hill run with two 15 minute tempo inserts.  I was doubtful that the tempos would eventuate because I was feeling a bit fatigued (and my run started at 5.30am so I was half asleep as well!), but I stuck to the programme and they went surprisingly well.  One of the tempo intervals went up the Summit Road from the top of Rapaki and around to Sugar Loaf, and it felt so good!  A guy passed me (someone I know of who does a lot of mountain/hill races), but I could certainly hear him coming from behind me, such was his breathing (I wasn’t breathing as hard as he was – I thought maybe it was a boy-having-to-pass-a-girl thing?!)!  I managed to keep pace quite well with him after that (it’s surprising how you ‘wake up’, whether it’s while cycling or running, when someone passes you!).  When I got home, I told Graham that Peter had passed me going up the hill and his response was “Was he making lots of noise?”  Oh, maybe he wasn’t trying so hard afterall – it’s just the way he is!!  By the time I got home, my legs felt hammered – less than a year ago, I was doing 6-7 hour hill runs.  Now 2.5 hours knackers me!  How am I going to run a marathon in 46 sleeps?!

I was also supposed to do a 3km swim yesterday, but my swims are normally crap when I’m feeling knackered so I decided not to demoralise myself by having a garbage session.  I did the 3km swim today, instead of having a rest day.  Yeah, I know, it’s a cardinal sin to pack sessions in, but the end of this week is going to be minimal training-wise, so I didn’t think there would be any harm.

The OW swim on Saturday evening went okay.  We headed over to Cass Bay and bumped into Jill and Colin – Jill had just finished her swim (of all the places she and I could have been on a Saturday evening, we both happened to be at Cass Bay!).  I was supposed to do 45 minutes, but ended up doing just 25 minutes of actual swimming time.  I felt really good, but I really struggle with the salt water and my throat was burning by the time I got out.  I don’t think I’ll ever get used to salt water - I just wish we had a fresh water lake in Christchurch.  I did some decent loops, swimming around buoys and boats, but I still feel nervous swimming in a sea environment.  Jill sent me an email today as a follow-up, and described the Wanaka cycle course for me, and which sections of the course the prevailing wind will hit if it’s out and about on the 17th.  That was very handy in terms of preparing myself!

This Week

Graham is working late shift (until 9pm) Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, so my training is limited to what I can get away with while looking after the kids.  I’m supposed to do an OW swim tomorrow, but won’t be able to fit it in – Louis has piano after school, Ella has running group, so I’ll do my run while she’s there, then it’ll be around 7.30pm by the time we get home.  A 60 minute OW swim on top of that would make it too late a night (afterall, I guess I’d better feed the kids some tea at some stage).

On Friday, we’ll be heading down to Te Anau for the Kepler, leaving home around 7am to have a reasonably cruisy drive.  It’ll be important to have lots of breaks along the way so Graham can stretch his legs.  He came up with the idea of heading down to Dunedin on Thursday straight after school to break the trip up – that was until I reminded him that I had a meeting all afternoon on Thursday and wouldn’t be home until around tea time.  That stuffed that idea.  We could have still headed down later, but I suggested it was more important to get a good night’s sleep on Thursday, and an unfamiliar motel bed probably wouldn’t give that to him.

Paul has given me Friday, Saturday and Sunday off training given that it’ll be a bit tricky with two full travelling days, and Saturday being Kepler day.  He just wants me to fit a 30 minute run in sometime while I’m away.  That shouldn’t be hard – we’ll have around 5.5 hours spare while Graham’s running, but the race starts at 6am so it may be back to the motel for a nap after we see him off (bearing in mind we’ll be up just after 4am!!).

I’ve ’sort of’ found a pool in Te Anau – an indoor heated jobbie.  I say ’sort of’, because the darn pool doesn’t have a website to say what the facilities are.  If I can’t Google something, I get a bit miffed.   So I have no idea of what hours they’re open, and whether they have a lane pool (or whether it’s just a leisure pool).  I suggested to Graham that we could head to the pool in the afternoon after the race, and he could recover in the spa while I train, but he’s doubtful that the ‘Fiordland Community Swimming Pool’ will stretch to a spa!

The other option was an OW swim in the lake - Graham just rolled his eyes (we’re talking a glacial lake afterall!).  But Rachel the pig headed one did some investigating (as she does) and discovered that the average lake temperature is just 8 degrees.  That’s just madness.  But they do promote a section of the lake as a ’swimming area’, so they must have at least some hardy souls down that way!

Paul has now started up his blog site – about time.   (as if I don’t spend enough time online reading blogs!!)  It’ll be good to read up on what some of his other coachees get up to (it feels like a bit of a secret society, knowing there are others like me out there, but I don’t know anything about them!).

Monday is Rani day!  I can’t wait to get our new wee cat.  I have lots of goodies awaiting her arrival, it’s just going to be an awkward moment taking her away from her owner (perhaps we should just snatch the cat and make a run for it?).