Festival season! Soundwave, Stone Sour, Presidents of USA and brokenribs!

Well I have to put this totally non running related post here!
I'm just recovering from going to Linkin Park at Rod Laver Arena (a sidewave), then Soundwave Festival, and then a week later I got to see the Presidents of United States of America.
I was basically going to Soundwave to see Stone Sour and Bullet For My Valentine. The rest was a bonus.
In the week prior to Soundwave I got handed tickets for corporate box seats at Linkin Park who were being supported by Stone Sour! Hell yes!
So I had the fancy suit treatment in our corporate box, ate a heap of appetisers , and drank my body weight in alcohol. Had a great time enjoying the music in a nice and relaxed environment!

My fav part of Stone Sour @ Rod Laver Arena

I made it into the local news rag!

I was contacted by the promoters for the upcoming Canberra Marathon as someone they could write an article about as a way of promoting both the Australian Running Festival and my Australian Sweep attempt.
Anyone who knows me, would realise I jumped at the chance. A chance to talk all about myself? Of course I will!
They called a few days later to say the local paper would be in contact. So last Thursday I met with the reporter (@JustineMB_29) and photographer and blabbed about myself for twenty minutes. Kudos to them too, they were really good at appearing interested! ^_^

Anyways here is a picture of the article as it appeared, and a sports feature at that! The article is also available online.  People who remember me from my high school days wouldn't have predicted this was ever possible I'm sure!

I was slightly disappointed that my Blog didn't get a mention, but I'm sure the PR team were also slightly disappointed that there wasn't more information about the Canberra Marathon too haha!

So that's my 2 minutes of fame, what else have I been up to...?
I've been very busy at work lately. I was never one to blog often, but I have been meaning to write more often than this!

I haven't stuck to my training program well lately, it's been broken apart by some "inconvenient" music festivals and long awaited band tours, I'll write more about that in another post!

Roller Coaster Run is this weekend and I'm looking forward to it even if I do feel under prepared. I'm just excited to meet more of this awesome running community and share some sweat in a new environment!

I've found out my bib number is going to be 522 and there is a live results tracker online over here at tomatoresults.com.au - tune in if you are interested, the race starts at 7AM DST (GMT+11) and the way I'm feeling, we'll just be scraping through the cutoffs :D
Some of my friends are running this as well - Kai (512), Kerry (538), Sally (607), Raj (570), and Shane (120)
WISH US LUCK!

That's all for now, so a good few questions for today are;
What sort of distractions do you allow to 'interfere' with your program?
What do you think when you compare yourself now to way back in your school days?

Schedule Updates and my #13in2013 plan

This is a post for the #13in2013 challenge more than anything, I've settled on my dates for races for the calendar year, so my schedule page has been updated!

I now have my 13 Marathon+ races for the year planned which are comprised of 8 Marathons and 5 Ultras.

My 13in2013 schedule is as follows:

1. TAS: Cadbury Marathon, Hobart - 13th January
2. VIC: Roller Coaster Run (43km Trail), Mount Dandenong - 16th March
3. ACT: Australian Running Festival (Marathon), Canberra - 14th April
4. VIC: Great Ocean Road Marathon (45km Road), Apollo Bay - 19th May
5. SA: Barossa Marathon, Tanunda - 26th May
6. VIC: Crater 2 Coast (50km Road), Warrnambool - 16th June
7. VIC: Trails Plus You Yangs 50/50 (50km Trail), Little River - 21st July
8. QLD: Brisbane Marathon, Brisbane - 4th August
9. NT: Alice Springs Marathon, Alice Springs - 18th August
10. WA: Perth City to Surf Marathon, Perth - 25th August
11. NSW: Blackmores Sydney Running Festival (Marathon), Sydney - 22nd September
12. VIC: Medibank Melbourne Marathon, Melbourne - 13th October
13. VIC: Marysville Marathon (50km Trail), Marysville - 17th November

I've already completed the first race, and you can read my Race Report on the Cadbury Marathon if you would like to know more about that one, I'll try and keep the #13in2013 group updated as I complete each event!

I tried to order some cool #13in2013 custom running tees from the 13in2013 Facebook group, but the company wanted to charge as much for shipping as for the shirt itself!! So I cancelled the order and decided I need to find a nice and reasonably-priced local custom shirt company if I am going to participate in the fashion side of the running group!

Following the #13in2013 hashtag on Twitter has been fun, and a lot of people in the challenge are already at their fourth of fifth event already! These are mostly 5km events, but nonetheless motivating to see such excitement from all the participants as they knock over their goals!

Now that reminds me, we have to appreciate one particular man - Trent Morrow - who has already knocked over his 13in2013 for the year! Trent aka Marathon Man, is on his way to a record attempt of 160+ Marathons for the year. He recently completed his 13th event which you can read about here. I highly recommend you get behind this guy, he is running for a number of charities and to top it off, is a super friendly guy!

Running Naked into First Place!

On the weekend I ran my first ever race as a member of the local Warrnambool Athletics Club!
I've been meaning to join the club for a few years but it wasn't until recently, with all the interaction I've had with the online running community, that I realised how much I could enjoy such a surrounding. Yes, that's right Kate, social media is good for my running!

Warrnambool Beach baby! (source: dantaylor @ flickr)

So I fronted up for the 6km race which started on the beautiful Warrnambool Beach (be jealous my American friends, Winter sucks! ahahaha!) - a nominated handicap race - which means you actually state the time you plan to run and the winner is the person who finishes closest to their nominated time!

Simplest rule was that you couldn't have anything that could be used for timing (watches, mp3 players, phones, metronomes, police helicopters etc). OH MY GOD, RUN NAKED? I'm pretty sure this idea of not having your splits, heart rate, and mp3 playlist all recorded in detail would surely panic quite a few of my blogging and twitter friends :P Yes I mean you @PaulRunsLong and @MummyLovesToRun!

My first marathon of 2013, Tasmania!

Cadbury marathon, Hobart, Tasmania; the first of my many marathons in 2013!

I travelled over to Tasmania and well, my preparation was far from ideal. I took the opportunity to holiday with my gorgeous 4 year old daughter (hence forth I shall refer to her as Little Miss J!) for the week after doing the race. As a result, we sailed on the Spirit of Tasmania, taking my car over for the trip! We went out for dinner in Melbourne with a great group of runners I've met through Twitter the Thursday prior to sailing, which although fun meant a rather late night. Early to rise Friday morning for a 6am boarding of the Spirit of Tasmania only to find the boat was 2 hours behind schedule!

Little Miss J watching the boat FINALLY arrive!

9 hours sailing, with Little Miss J wide awake, made for very little rest at all for me! We arrived in Devonport at 8.30pm it was 9.30 pm before we were off the boat and within 5 minutes Little Miss J was fast asleep, then we had the long drive south to Hobart, it was after 2am before we got to bed!
Don't forget that I also completely missed my typical Friday pre-race pasta load up, since the boat didn't serve dinner and well the only places to eat in Devonport were fast food!
Saturday was a busy day too and even though we had a relatively early dinner, I still managed to stuff around until late in the night getting my race gear organized and the usual gear layout ritual.