I’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging scene for a few weeks because I have moved house, for the third time in 18 months. I also make it more and more difficult each time by accumulating more ‘stuff’ , which I will never use, each time I move. For example I knocked down my family home and built four smaller villas in an attempt to mimic Donald Trump and , through property development, make my fortune. Unfortunately I am now discovering while young Donald has lost his hair (it’s a wig right?) and making your zillions from property development isn’t an easy as first envisaged.  This is a prime example of life getting in the way of running. All of a sudden I’m spending my time moving heavy boxes around Perth and working muscles that , as a runner, I have no right working. If I’m not careful I’ll be back up to the 80kg Beef-cake my Wife dreams about, truth be told I was that fine specimen when I me No1 Wife and lost the 10kg to aid in my endless pursuit of running personal bests. I suppose I courted and won over Karen before deciding I wanted the ‘Schlinder’s list extra’ look , when she was thinking Rocky (and I mean the chiseled version in Rocky 3. !)

Anyhow this move has resulted in me only running twice in 5 days and, if you know me, this is unheard of , bar an injury of course. All my time has been spent moving between houses driving hire trucks and the family SUV full of ‘stuff’. Add to this No1 Wife took No1, 2 and 3 Daughters to Aberdeen over the Easter holiday so left me with the boys. (Stanley and Spencer, two 2 year old Golden Retrievers; who are useless for helping when you’re moving house, funnily enough?)

Needless to say it has been a hard week and one which will culminate Friday night/Saturday morning with a 12 hour race. The race starts at midnight Friday night and will finish midday Saturday. As there’s a race briefing before 11pm I’m not expecting any sleep pre-race and certainly will not be napping when the guns goes. (Although Jon is bring a tent for some reason, probably to hold all his food, he loves his ultra’s, well the eating bits anyway?)

The Light Horse Ultra is a 3/6/12 hour race over a 2.5km loop which changes direction every three hours. ( http://lighthorseultra.com.au/ ) As I’m doing the 12 hour it’s a midnight start which means head torches and probably skins for the cold evening conditions. Of course thing warm up rapidly in WA when the suns pokes her head above the parapet,  so I’ll need to change halfway through the event. Luckily Jon has his ‘food tent’, hope there’s some room in there for me in-between the potatoes, chicken, donuts, gu’s… etc etc.. the list is endless! In the image from the website you can see Jon leading the charge , what the other competitors don’t realise is he has one thing on his mind and it’s not the next lap, it’s the next ‘ultra treat’…

Give Jon his due he is stepping up into the ultra world with great gusto. On Monday he came second in the West Australian Marathon Club 40 Miler (64k) event, sneaking in under 5 hours. Friday night he’ll aim for 130k+ and then the following weekend is the Margaret River Ultra; an 80k trail event with some series sand-time.  ( http://rapidascent.com.au/margaretriverultra/ ) That’s over 275k+ of racing in less than two weeks. He will need to eat a lot of food to accomplish this and I feel this may be his hidden agenda. We’ll need to keep an eye on the scales and his infamous bumble bee top ( see above photo). The more he eats the more the top rides up his stomach, when we can see his midriff it’s a sign he’s done (eaten) too much.

As always I digress, the point of the post is life gets in the way sometimes and you need to do what you can but not over think it. Of course it would be great to be able to run whenever you choose and let everything else take a back seat, and you can, it’s called being a professional runner.  Before you jack in your job though please note the money is crap to non-existent and you have to be really, really, really good , to then make peanuts , truth be told.  We’ve often discussed why this is and I feel it’s just down to the general public at large not ‘getting’ why we do what we do. A friend of mine once told me he watched me and my fellow runners in a 10k and no one was smiling , the complete opposite in fact , it looked like everybody was in pain. He couldn’t for the life of him see any enjoyment anywhere. Even at the finish everybody seemed to be ‘disappointed’. This is the view of most people when I know I loved that 10k and ran a great time and felt fantastic for weeks afterwards. Of course the event is painful but that’s the whole point, we’re pushing ourselves. In a world where we are protected from just about everything running gives you that rush of adrenaline that you can not find anywhere else, at least not on a daily basis. When you race, really race , you are only racing yourself and the best you can be, or have been, no one else; unless you’re that really , really good pro runner with no money we talked about earlier, they’re racing for the glory and a pair of Asics shoes.?

So when life does get in the way , just do whatever you can to maintain your fitness level and don’t worry, there is light at the end of the tunnel and eventually the world will get back to normal and you’ll be hitting those high mileage weeks you can only dream about at the moment. Right. that’s me, time to take the boys for a walk… or maybe a run, now there’s an idea ?