It’s been paining…..for so long!!!

It was a fantastic weekend. Still feeling a little bogged down with flu but it’s nearly left my body. On the road to recovery now. The Blue Baggers knocked over Geelong at the MCG. My daughter was over there on Friday night at the MCG watching the match so I’m sure it was a magic moment for her as well. I had to cancel my Spin Coaching session again on Friday night as I still wasn’t feeling up to it.

English Premier League starting in a week( come on you Gunners!!), Hyundai A League started up with some great football. The cricket looks like Aus will beat England in the 4th test so there’s heaps of intrigue there. Stosur doing well in the tennis. City to Surf participants out practising their jogging everywhere I look. It’s going to be massive in 3 weeks time. Looks like I’ll do the half marathon in the Perth City to Surf as part of my marathon preparation. And swimming……well, I’ve said I’ll join the Riverton Redbacks Aussi Masters but I’m sure I’ll put this off a little longer.

This year I was a volunteer for Painathlon 2009. The event was run on Saturday. If you’re not sure what this entails, have a look at the www.painathlon.com website. My preparation started the night before. I went to organiser Jono Hague’s house and managed to get my trailer load of signage and bike racking. My poor little Daihatsu Sirion - there’s just things a 1 litre engine just shouldn’t be doing!!

My first job was to get the racking set up at challenge number 3. This was called Cardiac Hill and involved a long grass hill run up to a place called DNA tower in Kings Park, Perth. (So called because the tower resembles a DNA strand). It began raining but I was ably assisted by Kate, Nick and Sanjewa. The first group of Painathletes came in (a group of half a dozen I’d say). This is , dare I say, probably one of the easier of the 10 challenges and probably the only stage where the competitors may recover somewhat on the way down from punching their race card at the top of the tower. One guy’s bike saddle literally just popped out. I had fears that his pain may be more pronounced than other competitors. His saddle, I later discovered, behaved itself.

Sanjewa accompanied me for the rest of the day as we packed up the racking and headed off to the Truth at Campersic Rd, Brigadoon. We stopped off for a coffee at a service station on Great Eastern Hwy. We laughed that it may be a little weird if we saw some painathletes cycling past. And, 5 mins later, coffee still being prepared, this is exactly what we saw. No panic though. My little car braved the 35kms out to the Swan Valley. We met up with others who had prepared a veritable feast of lollies, cakes and lots of other goodies for the Painathletes. What a hard challenge this is. The hardest I reckon. A great view of the Avon River off to the left but precious little time to enjoy it. Boulonnais is such a hard road to get to the top of. A big container of water and cups at the top, with the all important punch to mark the race card.

Around 20mins of watching the lead competitors arrive, we went off to the Zig Zag which involved a lot more work setting up road signs, bike racking and road closure treatments at the top. Some folk wanting to check out the Targa Rally course up this road. The painathlete competitors could take a shortcut on the way down. I had around 5 litres of berry powerade but ran out with around 2 competitors to go!!

Sanjewa and I had experienced a long day of volunteering (but I’m sure it was no different to the efforts all the other volunteers put in). The end result is a truck load of money raised for Variety WA. I travelled to the finish line at Jacob’s ladder and heard some horror stories on just how hard the Quadcruncher stage was. Jenni Tibbits was helping out at Canning Bridge (painultimate) and I saw Todd Panietz , Rick Twine, Colin Francis and several other people I recognised as seasoned Painathletes all doing well. Lucy Bowman had a couple of punctures but had kept on going.

It was a very inspiring day. I’m still getting over the flu so pretty glad I didn’t participate in this event as I had last year. I have now found a 16 week marathon training program. My wife will do the beginner’s version and I will do the veteran version. We are both in teams for Ironman WA. It may well be the last IMWA and it seems there are already around 700 individual entrants.

Congratulations to all the painathletes (those who did the half as well as the full event). You are all awesome athletes and I have the greatest admiration for the efforts put in. The bursts of torrential rain would have soaked most people’s gear.

The first female competitor did very well (I think she finished with Rick Twine). A very solid effort from both.

Love the shirts, the cap. The atmosphere at Jacob’s ladder was great. Todd’s sister was dousing him with water from her umbrella each time he reached the top.

Onwards and upwards. To all you painathletes, let the healing begin. To my younger brother in Melbourne who’s offered to run the marathon as part of IMWA - start training now for pity sake.

We have a team called Team Force with brand new jerseys. Our first ride will be in the cyclosportif at Byford on 23 August for a 106km ride. There will be hills and there will also be pain. But I love it. Bring it on, bring it all on. Training in earnest starts tomorrow. Come along for the ride!! I’ll update the blog a lot more regularly now as I’ll hopefully have a lot more training info to give you.

Adios amoebas
CHRISTO