Kia ora

So, I’m in New Zealand. I almost have to pinch myself when I wake up to believe that this is real. The haze of confusion is slowly lifting and I’m starting to understand how things work here. Still don’t have internet at home, which is causing me too feel quite disconnected from the world. Even if I do have mobile internet in my phone, it is just not the same. Anyway, I hope my building supervisor will fix it soon so I can start Skyping and calling people.

My first impressions of New Zealand is that it is very beautiful here. On my way from the airport in Auckland, all I saw were beautiful green rolling hills, and I was seriously half expecting Hobbits to appear (or Teletubbies!). The nature here is lovely. Hamilton is also very green and beautiful, but very different from Oslo. It reminds me both of the suburb where I lived in Augusta, Georgia, and Iceland. Things are flat here (that part does not look like Iceland at all!) and everything is spread out. It is not very pedestrian friendly, you almost need to have a car. There are buses but, I don’t know, the public transport system doesn’t seem to have the same convenience as it does in Oslo. I walked to the supermarket yesterday, about a 40minute walk/3km (similar from Eyrin to Bónus, for my Isafjordur dwelling readers). It is doable, at least if I take the bus back home like I did. I’ll just have to put my grocery shopping on my work out plan.

Saying that New Zealanders are friendly, is like the understatement of the century. Very friendly people, indeed. Everybody is so helpful and nice and willing to help with everything. And it doesn’t seem fake, people seem to be genuinely interested in helping. It definitely helps with settling in. I have just finished all the enrollment paperwork and just got my student ID card, tomorrow I will get my office space and Wednesday I’ll have my first meeting with my supervisors to finish all the details with the supervision agreement and then ... fulltime PhD student I’ll be! They seem to take very good care of their postgraduate students here. There are writing retreats and workshops and other events to both bring people together but also to assist you with issues you might be having. I’m so looking forward to the next 3 years.

I will try to keep this blog active and interesting for you, I haven’t quite decided what kind of a blog it will be, academic, personal, marathon training, or a combination of all three. We will see. I hope you are all well.

The last day ...

Tomorrow will be a big day. A day of changes. A day of goodbyes and a day of new beginnings. My last day as a practicing preschool teacher! It sounds strange to me, that I will no longer be a preschool teacher. Well, I think I will always be a preschool teacher at heart. It has defined me in so many ways in the last 5 years, and the 7 years before that while I was working in a preschool while not yet a qualified teacher. 12 years of preschool, playschool, kindergarten, or what you want to call the settings I’ve been fortunate to work at. 

Solborg in my hometown is always going to be “my” preschool, the place where I found my calling and got such fantastic experiences, made friends and got to be a part of the lives of all those amazing children. I still miss it. The staff there, the surroundings, the building, the pedagogy, the brake-room, the cook! And of course the children and the history I have there. Here in Oslo, I have worked as a preschool teacher in two very different kindergartens in two very different parts of Oslo (plus a few more in the last few weeks). I feel so fortunate to have worked with some lovely people who touched my life in different ways, and got to teach and care for groups of amazing children, children I will always remember and keep in my heart.

I will miss it, being so close to children and having a direct influence on their lives and experiences. I will miss experiencing the world through their eyes, observing and guiding their learning. I will miss all the cuddles and hugs they gave me, their smiles when I came to work and their love. And I will miss not having a group of children to cuddle and hug, to smile at and to love. I believe strongly that it is a preschool teacher’s greatest duty to love the children he/she is working with. It is not parent-child love, or family-love, or whatever meaning people may associate with the word love. It is “educational-love”. It is care. It is a genuine interest in the child’s well-being and learning. How can you work with children if you don’t have that, I only ask? I don’t think you can, and I most certainly don’t think you should!

My new life will be very different from my old one. I will still be deeply involved in the preschool, early childhood education and care, but in such a different way. Trying to make a difference in children’ lives, from a desk in an office. I have never really worked in an office before. I don’t think the call-centre I worked at many, many years ago, counts. It will be interesting. Sitting all day, reading, writing, researching. I really look forward to it while at the same time I’m dreading it. Thankfully, I will also be training for a marathon, so there will be a lot of running as well as sitting. A few more days and there I’ll be, a PhD student, with high hopes and big dreams. I can hardly wait!

Now what?

This is me super excited about finishing my second half marathon in Oslo 20th September. I was sooooooo happy to finish. The last two kilometers were very difficult but I did enjoy the run. The route was very nice although there were some difficult hills. My form wasn't so good and my time was 6 minutes slower than my first half marathon 4 weeks earlier, but in general I'm happy with the race and very proud to have done it.

Now I'm thinking about my next goals. I'm still planning to run a full marathon next year, in the autumn (well, spring for me down under!) ;) And I want to do something fun, exciting and challenging on my 40th birthday next July. Running 40km would be one heck of a celebration. Whether I will run those km in one race or spread them through a few days, we will see, but it most certainly tickles my fancy to do something so extreme. Mostly because then I will have no choice but to train for it!!!

I know I'm not the most active blogger, but I'm trying and the plan is to become much more active as I start my next phase in my live down in New Zealand. Here's to positive thinking ;)

One month ...

One month until my first half-marathon!!! OMG, I’m not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. No, of course it is a good thing. I still have a long way to go before I’m ready, but I’m heading in the right direction and will be ready, I’ sure. My long runs (which I do on Saturdays) will be 14km this Saturday, 16km the Saturday after that and 18km after that. Then on the Saturday week before the race, I will just do a 10km run to make sure that I’m not too tired as the race approaches. This is all very exciting. Still, I have been feeling a little discouraged lately. It feels like my progress is very slow and it is a little disheartening to be running so slowly. But, I’m trying to stay motivated (and succeeding) by reading a lot about running and watching endless Youtube videos. Trying to remember that this is a ‘marathon and not a sprint’!

I got a new gps/pulse clock :) It is a Garmin Forerunner 220. Simple but with all the things one needs, gps to measure distance and speed and heart rate monitor to measure effort. Had my first run on Tuesday and it went very well. It was an ‘easy’ aerobic base training run, which means one runs at 65-75% of max pulse. That is not very fast! Tomorrow I have an interval training waiting for me. The intervals will be sprints or hills, I haven’t decided, at 85-95% of max pulse. I’m looking into all those different interval training programs, there are a lot of them out there. One is, for example, where you run as fast as you can for 1min and walk/jog for 1min, and repeat maybe 10 times. As your form improves, you increase the time but keep the rest in between the same, and even shorten that as you improve more.  There is also the pyramid, run 1min as fast as you can, rest, than 2min, rest, than 3min, rest, than 4min, rest, than 5min, rest, than 4min, rest, 3min, rest, 2min rest, 1min. You can also measure distance instead of time. I think I’ll do one of those tomorrow. Which calls for another 6am wakeup call (or even earlier) as it is just too hot here in Oslo these days. I love the heat and love spending time at the beach or park soaking up the sun, but it does make running tricky and also, I get very lethargic, very slow and dazed and not very interested in vigorous activities.

I don’t have the energy to write anymore now so ...

Finding the pace ...

Last Thursday I went on a great midnight run in the moonlight. It was still very hot but at least there was no sun. It was only 6.6K and very slow, but lovely. Then, on Saturday, I had my long run. I took the metro up to Frognerseteren (in the woods north of Oslo) and set up to run to Sognsvann (also north of Oslo). The best thing about living in Oslo is the great public transport system that takes you right into the middle of nowhere so it is very easy to enjoy the nature here, and there is plenty of nature here! 

I have walked this route several times, and knew that it was about 10-12K, so I figured it would be a great way to do some nature watching while getting my miles in. It started fine but soon I realised that this was going to be tricky. Lots of hills going up! Which is a little strange as I’m sure that Frognerseteren is further up from sea level than Sognsvann. But, I soldiered on. The first 5Ks were very difficult but finally around the 6K mark it got easier and I found a good pace and was just cruising along. Then disaster strikes! I somehow misread the signs and before I knew it I was on a gruelling trail run. I actually loved being in the woods on the trail, but I was not prepared for it. Maybe if I hadn’t already run around 6K and had on trail running shoes, it would have been fine, but that was not the case. After about 3K trail running/crawling I finally found the right path and got back to normal running. I managed to clock in 12K in record braking 1 hour 44 minutes! I’m very proud of myself for not quitting and managing to run most of the way, even if it was very slow and, in hindsight, maybe not very smart. I went home and stretched and stretched and then spend the rest of the day at the beach. The next day I was basically comatosed! My hip flexors and ankles were destroyed, I could barely walk, and I think I may have slept for 15 hours in total. I couldn’t even stay awake for the World Cup final in Brazil. Crazy! And even crazier is that I can’t wait to be in better shape so I can start giving this trail running another go ;)

I took 3 whole days off from running, to get my hip flexors time to heal and just to rest. And went for a great 7.4K run earlier today.  I just love running along Oslo’s marinas. So beautiful. And the paths are perfect so there is no need to worry about traffic. 

As usual, I’m still battling my sugar addiction and cravings and working on a balanced healthy diet. I got myself two new books. Finding Ultra by Rich Roll and Eat and Run by Scott Jurek. Both are vegan ultra athletes. It is very inspiring to read their stories and see what they are eating and how they are training. Now, I’m not even contemplating becoming an ultra endurance athlete, but I can take things from their books and use in my half marathon training as well. You don’t have to be an ultra endurance athlete to want to optimize your training. Interesting stuff. Now I just have to take what I’m reading and apply it to my real life. Now, that is a challenge!

In all my reading and youtube watching these last weeks, I’ve learned (again!) that I’m running too fast on my easy days and not fast enough on my hard days. This is the classic beginners mistake in running. The black hole. I even remember blogging about this last year. I’ve been trying to use the “conversation” test to make sure that I’m not running too fast, but it is not easy when you are running alone. And, it is not as reliable as a pulse clock. I just have to make some sacrifices, dig deep in my pockets and buy a pulse clock. It is so important to run in an aerobic state where the body is burning fat to get energy, and not in an anaerobic state where it is burning glycogen (or something like that). I really want my body to be burning fat! And it is also important as you start to run longer and longer distances as the body has enough fat to keep you going for a long time (even if you are a lean running machine) but only enough glycogen to fuel you for maybe 1,5-2 hours. Running in about 65-75% of your max heart rate is optimal in the easy and long runs. Tempo runs, where you are working at your race speed should be around 87-92% (race speed should be around 85-88% of your max heart rate) and intervals/speed training is 95-100% (these number I got from Runner’s World). Calculating your max heart rate can be tricky, but a relatively easy formula I got from Grete Waitz (she got it from Frank Horwill) is 209 – your age x 0,7 = your maximum heart rate. Which for me is 182. This formula is for females. For males it is 214 – your age x 0,8.  This all sounds very scientific but if Grete Waitz (9 times winner of the New York Marathon and a gold and silver winning Olympian) says it is a good formula, then it must be a good formula! Now, I just have to get that pulse clock. Will do some research and figure out which is the best and which doesn't brake the bank ;)