Author: fititinone

The whys

Since I announced my “Fit it in one” project, people have been asking a simple question: Why?

After answering this question over and over again in the past week, I realised that it is not as simple as I thought. In a typical conversation, I’ve been bombarded by a sequence of whys: Why? Why cancer? Why now? Why 12 marathons in one year?

The simple why

To raise funds for cancer research. That’s the easy one, but very few people stop here. Possibly only the ones that asked just for politeness.

Why cancer?

That’s the second level of curiosity.

The first thing that makes cancer special is its reach. Ask anyone and they will have a relative, a friend, or at least a friend of friend that has been affected by cancer. The second one, in my view, is its unpredictable nature: a person that looks perfectly healthy today, may be laying on a hospital bed tomorrow awaiting for surgery. The third is the severity of cancer: in many cases it represents a real life threat.

These are all reasons that anyone could use to justify fundraising for cancer research. However, in many situations these are followed by very personal reasons, and my case is no different. My father and grandmother have both been through surgery for bowel cancer, I have a cousin that was treated for Hodgkin in his 20’s, relatives that died of lung cancer, and a few friends that have survived or are still battling cancer. When it is that close to you, you can’t turn your back to it.

Why now?

It is funny how things work. Despite my family history and my personal connection with people with cancer, it took a person that I’ve only seen twice to trigger this project. It was a freezing morning in Canberra and I was coaching the last Saturday run of the Canberra pod of the Can Too Foundation. In the long runs we always have what we call the Energy Champ. This is a volunteer that is willing to be at 7am on a Saturday morning ready to hand drinks and lollies to our runners, and cheer them up as they pass the halfway mark. That Saturday our Energy Champ was there with her two kids. Because it was the last weekend before race day, we gathered at the meeting point after the run and talked about their race expectations and also why they were doing it. That was when our Energy Champ asked to say a few words. She thanked everyone for their effort for such a good cause. She then revealed, with her two kids by her side, that she is a cancer patient herself and that the money raised was helping research to increase her life expectancy. That hit me so hard that I immediately decided that I needed to do something special. I didn’t know what, but I knew I had to.

The Can Too Canberra pod celebrating just after finishing the SMH half-marathon. This amazing group of people raised more than $14k for cancer research!

Why marathons? Why 12 in one year?

Driving back home I was thinking about what to do. In the previous fundraising events that I participated my results were pathetic. In most cases the only money I raised was what I put myself as part of the event registration. For some time I’ve been trying to find the reason for my inability to raise funds. It could be the lack of family in Australia, my discomfort in asking people for money, or simply that my friends don’t see those events as a real challenge for me.

Recently I tried to tackle the last problem. For the third time I joined the Bilby Bathers team and participated in the Mega Swim Canberra, a 24h relay swim event to raise funds for multiple sclerosis. What could I do to make it look more challenging? Well, first of all I said that I would be happy to take any available shift. I ended up with the 4am to 5am and the 6am to 7am shifts, and also joined the short distance team relay from 9:30 to 12pm. On top of that I arrived one hour earlier to count laps for the poor guy swimming at 3am. I was taking pictures and posting on Facebook. I got lots of likes and one donation! Woo hoo! But that was all… 😦

Some of the awesome members of the Bilby Bathers team at the 24h Mega Swim 2015. After only 2 and a half hours of sleep and more than 8km swum I raised the stunning amount of… $55 😦 ! The team effort was great though, almost $6500! (Photo from the Mega Swim website)

So, for my new fundraising project I decided to do something impressive, something that I would never do just for fun. Well, an Ironman is in my plans, so no. An Ultraman? Not in my plans (yet?) but the amazing Debi Hazelden and John Mergler had just done that, also raising funds for Can Too. As I was discarding crazy one-off events I thought of doing a long term project, just like the treatments that my friends and relatives went (or are going) through. That’s how I came up with the “Fit it in one” idea: 12 marathons in one year! And here I am less than a month away from the first 42.195 km!

When friends call…

You have your training plan and all those workouts and runs decided weeks in advance. But a lot can (and will!) happen in the few months preceding your race. A sick kid at home, that unmissable party just the night before your toughest training of the week, unexpected work trips, you name it! Life will through things at you. But what to do? Stick to the plan or adapt?

Too much flexibility and you may find yourself skipping training sessions at the smallest hurdle, too much rigidity and you may risk wrecking your personal life.

On Saturday I had a long run planned but a friend needed help moving houses. What to do? My usual strategy when I have to give up on something is to give up on my sleep. This is because no one notices your absence while they are sleeping, and you can always catch up on your sleep later. Works beautifully when everyone else in your family enjoys that extra bit of sleep on the weekend ;-).

With 21km to run, a 6am start would do the trick, but with subzero temperatures I’d rather find another solution. A few minutes on the computer checking maps et voilà, the distance from home to their place was around 23km. And there was the solution right in front of me: run there! If you are tight on time and want to fit some extra training this is the rule to get to your destination: If you can swim, swim. If you can’t swim, run. If you can’t run, ride! If you can’t ride, do you really need to go that far?

Running to my destination: Saturday long run map.

22.6km and 1:43 h later and I was ready for my core work: lifting boxes. The recovery? Pizza and beer with friends!

Balance is everything. Be creative and adapt to stick to the plan.

And before you ask, yes, I got a lift back home!

The happiest marathon finisher ever?

If I needed more inspiration for my challenge this is it! Check the video of Harriette Thompson finishing a marathon at age 92!!!

With her son recently diagnosed with cancer, she ran to raise funds for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. More details of her story here http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/92-Year-Old-Seeks-To-Become-Oldest-Woman-to-Finish-Marathon-305609511.html

The first post…

People say that the first post sets the tone of the blog. So before I think too much about it, let me get the first one out of the way.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog about my races, my training, and fitness in general for quite some time. However there was always that excuse… “I don’t have time”.

Recently, a friend of ours came to my wife and said: “You two are lucky to be fit!” I don’t know exactly what he meant by that, and I wasn’t there to ask. Genetics? Sure it plays some role but let me tell you something, leave me for a month in Brazil without training and with my mum cooking and you’ll see the numbers on the scale going up and my fitness level going down!

Lucky? Really? That word was echoing in my brain, probably because the episode happened in the middle of my marathon training. Not a good time to hear someone telling that you’re “lucky”. Even worse, halfway through the training I started coaching a group for the Sydney Morning Herald half marathon with the Can Too Foundation. Because my long runs were already over 20km and the group was just starting, I had to move my long runs to Friday. Not that bad until you need to run 34km and have a work meeting at 9am. And that was the day I took the photo in the post.

Early, dark and cold morning. A great character building run.

Lucky? Really? Yes, I was “lucky” to have an alarm clock to wake me up at 4 am, “lucky” to have healthy food in my fridge, and “lucky” to be avoiding alcohol at parties. I was angry and wanted to write about it. Where is my blog? It didn’t exist, I didn’t have time, but the idea was growing stronger.

I’m glad the idea of a blog didn’t materialize at that time. Would have been for the wrong reason. I never imagined it as a space to rant on about things (even though I kind of just did it, and in the first post ;-)). The final push to have it done came on the last Saturday before the SMH half marathon race, when I came up with this crazy idea of doing twelve marathons in one year to raise money for cancer research (I’ll explain in a future post). No, it is not an original idea, people have done it before, but it is too big to let it happen without writing about it. I needed a blog. If I can fit it in one year, I can fit some extra hours of writing in my week.