The week started off with a Monday off work (Labour Day in NZ). Best way to start the week me thinks! I didn't do any training but I managed to tame the garden. Hopefully it will mean that there will be no strenuous gardening to be done before the HI ... just a bit of planting and grass cutting. I can deal with that.
Tuesday was just bike intervals on the trainer and shock horror ... a swim! It was only a 1k straight swim but I do try to concentrate on different parts of the stroke so it's almost like drills. My times are coming down so I'll stick with it (18:43 for 1K). Thursday was a similar swim but for 2K in 38:32. I would snap off the hand that offered me that on race day.
Wednesday was another lesson in not eating too much or too soon before running. Jo made my favourite dinner of all time (spaghetti bolognese) and I couldn't resist the huge meal put in front of me. I take Jo's point that it was me that actually dished up the dinner but SHE made it so it was HER fault! I was stuffed but I did have 90 mins before I had to go out. Wasn't long enough. I could feel it all sloshing about with every step. The 6:09/k pace was my slowest average for a long time. Live and learn.
Thursday was another windtrainer session. The weather is getting better and it's staying light fairly late but it just seems easier to do an hour of intervals watching a DVD than going out on the road. Never thought I'd feel like that. I think once summer comes round a bit more I will feel differently and want to get out in the sunshine and pack the trainer away. We'll see.
Towards the end of the session the endorphins were really flowing. I was working hard during the intervals and (as I occasionally do) I had U2 on the i-pod and I can only explain that I had a wave of spirituality. Gawd knows what that means! If I was religious I think I would have explained it as a God experience ... but I'm not ...
I said to Jo afterwards that I was worried. She asked if it was my calf playing up but I said 'no, I'm worried I'm turning religious!' ... might have to give up these mind altering training sessions :)
Friday morning I woke up at 4am and couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned till 6am and then got up and checked my Gmail. There was a message from my brother that Bill had died followed 2 minutes later by a phone call from my mum hoping to catch me with the bad news before I read the email. We were both a bit of a mess and there were lots of tears.
Bill, my dad's brother was 67 but after having meningitis at the age of four, he mentally stayed at that age all his life. He was a child in a man's body for all the time I knew him. He had been ill for the last four years and had been in and out of hospital all this time. It is almost a blessing that he is at peace now and hopefully with my Nan and Grandad who looked after him throughout their lives.
I couldn't face work and as I was only booked onto a course (no class to teach on Friday) I decided to take the day off. Jo suggested we got out and walked around the Mount but then she said 'I think you need to RUN and get all your emotions out ... let's go to the Blue Lake' ... I didn't argue. Laura was also in tears. We kept her off school and took her with us. Adam wanted to go to school so I took him in and then we were off to the Blue Lake.
Jo dropped me off at the Lake and then headed into town with Laura. They were off to shop. My idea of hell. I was going to run most of the Rotorua Half Ironman course.
I set off with no strategy and no planned pace or time target. I just wanted to run and remember Bill. You might want to skip the rest of the post as I just ramble on about my memories of Bill.
My earliest memory of Bill is his bed in the front room of my nan's house. Not quite the opening scene from Willy Wonker's Chocolate Factory but similar. Bill couldn't walk and had to be taken everywhere in a wheelchair. It was a mission for me and my dad to get him out of bed when we were there. It still amazes me that my nan did it on her own (my grandad died when I was young) gawd knows how many times a day, every day. She was a big strong lady but Bill was a 6ft tall bloke who had very little strength to help himself. When my nan died in 1982 the doctor's said that she had lived as long as she did because she had such a strong heart and general strength from lifting Bill every day.
As a kid, Christmas was always spent at my nan's and it seemed we stayed there for weeks and weeks and had a great time. Bill was born on Christmas day and so it was a very special day. Bill lived for two things. Cups of tea and buses. As long as he had a few red buses to play with and tea at regular intervals all was right in his world.
It was always the mission to get Bill a different red bus as a present. I remember one year my dad spending a 'fortune' on a big Tonka truck and seeing Bill's indignation that it wasn't a red bus. Obviously he had five others wrapped up under the tree so it was no problem but the Tonka truck didn't make it onto the board balancing on a chair at the side of his bed. That was his play area. Me and my brother's would zoom the busses back and forth and he would love it ... for a while. He would then spend an age meticulously lining up the busses in a perfect straight line parallel to the edge of the board. Woe betide anyone that knocked the board and jogged them out of line.
When my nan died there was no option but to find Bill a nursing home. My nan had always resisted this because as a teenager Bill had spent some time in a home and the story went that the family went to pick him up and found him tied to a fence for some wrong doing. I can understand why she looked after him herself. We told ourselves that times had changed and these types of things didn't happen anymore.
Thankfully we found a great home. It was obviously sad when my nan died but it just seemed so much sadder when me and my mum and dad left Bill for the first time at the home. We just didn't know if he knew what was going on. Bill could talk but his vocabulary was limited to just a few words and you had to be tuned into his speech to understand him. He said bye when we left and he seemed happy but we just didn't know. It was a heart wrenchingly bad experience for us all. Fortunately he loved the place. The staff were living angels who worked long hours for a pittance and he loved the people who looked after him.
He had changed homes a few times over the years thanks to Margaret Thatcher's policy of care in the community which meant the closure of large scale homes and the use of real houses in the community. Bill always seemed to come up trumps in any change and always settled in well.
His last bedroom was unbelievable. It had flat screen plasma TV, DVD, ensuite and was a shrine to the red bus. The walls were filled with posters and framed paintings of busses. We saw Bill and his new room during our visit to the UK last year and it was amazing.
More and more memories came back to me on the run and it was very emotional. I had to get a grip of myself on the long steep hill back to the lake cos blubbering and gasping for breath at a 160 heart rate just don't mix.
I had a great run in the end. I went out faster than I normally do and didn't finish strong but overall it was good. Just over 17K at a 5:23 pace ... but that wasn't the point of the run. I felt so much better after the run. I started my warm down stretches on the 'beach' and watched as Jo sailed past in the car. Luckily a few minutes later she came back to pick me up. Missed the turning!
Saturday was a rest day. Spoke to my family in the UK and also my aunt who lives in Australia but is staying over my mum's as my other uncle (their brother) is in hospital with blood clots and they have also discovered he has cancer. They can't treat the cancer as he is too weak from the blood clots. We're praying that they can get the blood clots under control so that he can be treated for the cancer. As you can imagine it's been a traumatic time all round really. I think that's why it was so emotional when Bill died. We are all on edge anyway waiting for news of Glenn and then that news. Saying that I know it would have been emotional anyway but ...
I have looked at flights to go back but there is nothing I can do, but look after my mum. My aunt said that that is why she is there, as well as to be with my uncle. My teaching classes finish end November. I might look at flights again then.
As I have said many times before, I am not religious BUT as most non-religious people do, in a moment of need, I am praying for my uncle. If you have a few minutes for a similar prayer it would be appreciated.
