Kiva

Kiva is a wonderful initiative that allows folk in rich, fortunate countries like Australia to invest in micro-credit schemes in developing countries. I first heard about it on a BBC Worldservice radio program and the first time I visited the web site I was hooked :)

Have a look at this wonderful video, made by a Kiva volunteer from the UK, and then visit www.kiva.org

(What's this got to do with running you ask ? Well, for me, running is about a community of people sharing a common passion and helping and encouraging each other to achieve their best. It's a short hop from that to Kiva)


A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

Cross that bridge, and again, and again...

The Sri Chinmoy Doll's Point half marathon

Photograph by J Bar made available under the Gnu Free Documentation License.
Original full resolution photograph available here

It's not the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which I hope to be running across in September, but it's still a significant water-spanning bump to run across... out and back... twice... This is the Captain Cook Bridge and it was part of the course for the Sri Chinmoy half-marathon held last Sunday morning together with 10km and 5km events.

What a great event: cool conditions, no rain, a lovely scenic course on the shores of Botany Bay, a good turn-out and a wonderfully friendly atmosphere. As this was my first lengthy run since annoying my achilles I planned to take it easy and walk at times if I felt that I was stressing my ankle at all. But, as it turned out, I managed to chug along at a comfortable pace over the whole distance. How happy ? Very happy !

As usual at a Sri Chinmoy race, the organizers cooked a fabulous pancake breakfast for all finishers. I also had the pleasure of meeting some other members of the CoolRunning community for the first time: Wildthing, Gadfly, Crabby, TKR and Kyliee, as well as saying hello again to The Keg who is a great supporter of community runs like this one.

Next day my achilles was a bit swollen and I was limping a little, but still smiling !

Fundraising

This week, my Sydney Marathon fundraising page for the Black Dog Institute ticked over to $1170 ! That's about $1160 more than I expected to raise when I began this. Thanks again to everyone who has supported me so generously with their sponsorship and encouragement.

Don't have shoes, will travel...

So much has happened since my last post that it's hard to know where to start...

On the road again

Stretching, Tiger Balm and just not doing very much seemed to be the right tonic for my achilles niggle. It improved so much that a week ago I was able to run in the Bay To Bay 12km race. This is organised annually by Terrigal Trotters who seem to have it as their mission to be the friendliest, most encouraging and entertaining bunch of people you're ever likely to meet. The run starts at Woy Woy and follows the edge of Brisbane Waters all the way to Gosford - a very nice course.

It was going to be a cold morning, with a chill wind and drizzle, so I hunted around for something warm to wear. Luckily at the back of a drawer I found a pair of long neglected, slightly-more-colourful-than- usual-for-running, tights that I'd bought years ago for winter cycling.

OK, I admit that they do stand out compared to the standard issue black tights that most runners favour - but I was surprised by just how many comments they provoked. I'd like to send a particular thankyou to the race marshall who shouted out "Now that's style !" as I chugged past.

I did the run with my brother Paul who would usually be light years ahead of me. To help keep down to my pace, he had done a 20km warm-up run prior to the event (really, I'm not joking). Even though we chatted pretty much non-stop for the whole run, thanks to Paul's pacing I finished in a much faster time than I would usually manage, even with intact ankles.

This photo was taken when we were approaching the finish line - Paul looking relaxed and me with my customary expression of surprise at having got to the end. All in all it was a terrific event and highly recommended.

Fundraising for the Black Dog Institute

As I mentioned in my first post, I'd been given a web page so that people could sponsor my marathon attempt to raise money for the Black Dog Institute, but I hadn't been able to get it working. I'm happy to say that all was fixed by the fantastically helpful Alexandra Keating at gofundraise.com.au who not only saw to it that the technical problems got fixed, but even edited the page text and image for me so that I wouldn't have to wait. Thanks Alexandra !

The page, complete with fancy pants photo, is here.

It's only been a week of so since the page went up and I've been absolutely overwhelmed by the support that I've received from work colleagues and members of the CoolRunning community, thanks in no small part to Frank (a friend and CoolRunner in Adelaide) whose true calling is publicity agent ! The level of support has gone way beyond my expectations. Not only have folks been generous with their sponsorhip, but I've received a swag of messages with their encouragement, thoughts and inspiring personal accounts.

It's a privelege to get such support and it gives the whole effort a great sense of purpose. I'm going to be training hard - and leaving the shoes at home from now on !

Sydney Marathon 2008 - off to a slightly ordinary start

This year I have set myself the goal of running my first marathon. Yes (sigh) I know the rest of the universe has already done one and it's no quite like climbing Everest any more (yes [sigh] I know the rest of the universe has already climbed Everest and... <continue ad nauseum>). But since I only began my running career last August, and my longest run so far has been a half-marathon, the goal of being able to run 42km (26 miles) seems like a biggie.

The event in question is the Sydney Marathon 2008 on September 21st. This is a charity fund-raising event and I'm going to try to raise some money for The Black Dog Institute. To help galvanize myself into action I entered (and paid - ouch) a few days ago. I will be running in Bib Number 05976.

Sufficiently galvanized, committed, determined etc. I have launched myself into a program of intensive training. Unfortunately things haven't quite gotten off to a dream start on either the training or the fund-raising front.

I selected one of the training programs available on the Sydney Marathon web site and, being realistic about my abilities, decided to start a few weeks early and double up on the first part of the program. Now, my running style is characterized by a stately pace - a pace appropriate to someone whose interests lie in the higher, mental and spiritual aspects of running rather than base athleticism and competitiveness. To put it another way, I'm slow. Really slow. So when I saw that the training program included speed work from the very first week I was a little apprehensive. That was mistake. It would have been far better to be very apprehensive and thus a little more cautious...

My first and, to date, only speed session consisted of six one minute intervals. One minute at full pelt is about 200m for me. I threw myself into it and was rewarded with breathless nausea followed the next day by an uncomfortable twinge in my right achilles tendon. Bah ! I thought: athletic competitive runners such as me aren't troubled by pifling little aches and pains. So, I went for a medium length slightly painful run, followed a couple of days later by a shorter, more painful, limping jog. It then began to dawn on me that the achilles pain wasn't succumbing to my steely indifference as it was supposed to. In fact, by yesterday it had developed into a quite convincing running injury, complete with swelling and more pain, and leaving me limping around the house ridiculously. Ah well... better to get the injuries out of the way early rather than just before the event !

On the fund-raising front things haven't got very far. All event entrants who nominate to raise funds for charity are given a fund-raising web page which they can customize with their own text and images. Well, that's what the email from the organizers promises but, despite several attempts, I haven't managed to customize, or even slightly dent, my page. The pages are hosted at gofundraise.com.au and they provide a simple on-line template editor which, for me, generates screens full of xml error complaints when I try to do anything. Teething troubles I thought, and logged a help request with the gofundraise folk via their help page. Their system assured me that:

"our technical staff will response to you shortly"

It's been about 24 hours but they haven't responsed to me yet.