Ed

GPS Photos

2008-10-21T14:11:00.001+11:00

I have been doing all the silly stuff wearing a GPS watch that tracks me running, walking, riding, etc and I now have maps of the 15 hours and 50 minutes of competition I have undertaken over the last 5 weeks covering 290km. First up was the Sydney Marathon which at least finishes somewhere different from where it starts.

After a quiet few weeks I was ready for the Melbourne Marathon which is less all over town and more out and back.

Finally there was the around the bay and hopefully the below map shows you that I made it round as the only other photo I have is of me asleep on the couch afterwards.

Around the bay in 7 hours 30 minutes

2008-10-21T13:54:00.001+11:00

Yesterday was the last in my trilogy of stupid events, a 210km bike ride from Glen Huntly to Glen Huntly around Port Philip Bay. It started well when the phone I was using to wake me up (borrowed from work) hadn't been updated for daylight savings. Fortunately Eleri's backup alarm woke me up at 4:45 and so I was able to get away at 5:30 after a quick breakfast and lots of grumbling.

The ride into town was great and the road was clear until we got near to Port Melbourne where I joined a swarm of other riders and we slowly headed up to the bridge. From there it was a nice little ride down to Queenscliff and onto the ferry (eventually) during which time I learnt a little about cycling etiquette and indicating. The 3 things I learnt on the ride were:

Stopping/slowing - shouted and sometimes accompanied with a hand up showing that the group is stopping
Finger pointing at ground - look at that lovely bit of ripped up tyre on the ground
Finger pointed around back/to side - I'm moving out, wanting to move out, please don't crash into me

Once I'd mastered the requisite skills for riding in a group and combined them with keeping my eyes open and spotting a few obvious things before the pack got twitchy then I moved up from the back to second/third in the group and led a few times. It was very interesting and fortunately the groups were travelling at a speed that I could keep up with.

After the ferry ride I started up again and it very soon started to rain a bit which made the white lines nice and skiddy. I pottered on along the coast and up the hill and along the coast and along the coast and made it home in 7 hours and 30 minutes (ride time) and 9 hours 15 minutes (elapsed time). I stopped twice, once for the ferry and once at Mordialloc and am even thinking about riding to work tomorrow if I can sit down by then ;-)

Melbourne Marathon

2008-10-14T10:29:00.001+11:00

So Sunday was my second marathon of the year and the cheer squad consisted of Eleri, Jocelyne, David, Leigh, Brett, Blue and Spongebob this time. They all did a fantastic job out on the course and kept me topped up with gels and powerade. Here is the first cheer stop, it was quite hard to spot them as usual.

I was a bit better on the pace this time and was plugging away at 5 minutes 30 second per kilometre up until about 30km where we turned around and headed back to the city. Then the wind and the heat started to wear away at me and I got slower and had to stop for rests at drinks stations. Here I am a bit earlier looking lively.

As I headed for home the last 8km were very hard and I saw a lady runner collapse in front of me and later I heard a lot of runners had suffered in the heat (hit a top of 30 degrees). Fortunately there were lots of St John's Ambulance around and spectators with water so the lady and a few others I saw on the side of the road were being helped immediately. I bumped into Warren from AU just where the lady collapsed as well and we kept overtaking each other towards the MCG as we took it in turns to run and walk. I finally made it onto the hallowed turf and got high 5s from every volunteer on the way round. It is a fantastic finish to the event and long may it remain.

Thanks to all the supporters who came to the g and cheered people on, the marathon was really well supported this year and it makes a huge difference. Thanks especially to Eleri who puts up with all my angst, quietly supports me and is generally amazing, I couldn't do it without her.

Finally, her I am with medal, blue and having cleaned most of the gunk off my face from energy gels. I made it round in 4:09:51 which I was fairly happy with after the wind and heat had taken their toll.

Marathon prep

2008-10-14T10:05:00.001+11:00

In preperation for the Melbourne marathon the young Stephens took a day trip to the garden cenrtre to get some vegie seedlings. Whilst navigating, Eleri spotted a mini golf course on the map and so after lunch we took on the hardest course they could offer us! As you can see, it took big balls to get on this course.

At the final hole Eleri finally gives David the tip he needs to start winning, hit it at the hole.

Earlier on in the game Jocelyne showed us how to get the most out of your money by hitting as many shots as possible per hole. Eleri is practising her yoga in the background.

After a hard time on the course we took our purchases from the garden centre home and planted them. Here is the first batch of plantings at chez Stephens, hopefully the first of many successful seasons!

Let's all go running

2008-10-10T15:41:00.001+11:00

So this Sunday I am going to run my second marathon of the year and it's getting to the point where I start thinking about it too much and not sleeping. I was running through the course with Leigh and Chris in the office when I remembered the pain from Sydney. This weekend will be a concentration of pace running to try and start on 5 minute 30 second kilometres and stay on it for as long as possible. If I can manage to hold onto that pace then I should be home in under 4 hours and can then collapse on the hallowed turf of the MCG! Fingers crossed for a good race and some more man in tights photos on the way, GO TEAM!

man in tights

2008-09-27T11:57:00.001+10:00

After a week of hobbling I am now fully functioning and will be going for a training run tomorrow to start getting ready for the Melbourne marathon. This week has been fairly interesting as I have a 30 minute walk from the train station to the office which took 45 minutes on monday and has slowly come back down to 30 minutes during the week. Anyway, here are the long awaited, most anticipated photographs of a man in tights doing stupid amounts of running. Here blue and I are having a pre run conference:

Jen then decided to show us her best cow impression to go with the new member of the team, cow bell.

With my trusty team in place I went and joined the other runers and the cheer squad went up to the start. Blue managed to push his way right to the front using his friendly personality and big arms.

So now the race was on, it took a couple of minutes to get away after the gun and then it was all free running. I stuck with the 4 hour pace runners for about 10km and then pulled away from them a bit as I felt strong at about half way. Here I even had the strength to raise my arm.

Unfortunately all my early enthusiasm took it out of me and here you can see a slightly sadder boy. No kidding, that was about the size of my stride by then and soon after the spasm in my calf added to the fun so that I had to stretch it out every couple of kilometres.

I struggled on through though and after 4 hours 8 minutes and 38 seconds I was home and enjoying the gorgeous Sydney weather. Thanks for all your support and text messages on the day, I'm looking forward to the Melbourne marathon now as it is a flatter course and hopefully I've learnt to pace myself a bit better!

milking it

2008-09-25T08:18:00.001+10:00

To try and keep you interested until I manage to get the photos from Eleri's camera onto the internet here is a video of me crossing the line. I'm the one in a red t-shirt at the end ;-) http://www.byourbest.com/Finish/Default.aspx?id=5857

Official Photos and times

2008-09-24T11:40:00.001+10:00

For all of you that want to see a man in pain go to:

http://www5.marathon-photos.com/scripts/event_entry.py?job=Sports/2008%20Sports/Sydney%20Marathon&match=5857

The official times are up on the web as well at:

http://res.championchipaustralia.com/View.asp?id=1235&athID=5857

Apparently there is an official video of me crossing the line as well which should be available tomorrow and I'll chuck the photos from Eleri online tonight.

Tagtastic

2008-09-23T13:12:00.001+10:00

We have been tagged, apparently our fence and gate now belongs to kwelf, kweit, etc. I am suffering strongly from NIMBY where I can appreciate good graffiti on someone elses property but am furious by rubbish tags on our fence and gate. When we were in Sydney we were out and about and there was a graffiti wall with lots of people out in the day doing art on the side of a warehouse. I'm guessing they had asked permission and had thought about what they were doing. If you go to Glen Huntly at the moment you can see some retard has bought a can of silver spray paint and taged such imaginative things as rubbish bins, pavement and our property. For those of you who know something about graffiti, is this any good?

Ed says NO! Have reported it to the Police and sent them some photos for their tag album, now to bunnings for some cleaning stuff.

1 down, 2 to go

2008-09-22T12:28:00.001+10:00

As I sit here in the usual IT nerd outfit (white shirt, black trousers) I am hiding a secret. Without my compression tights on underneath I don't think I'd be able to make it to the water cooler and back without stopping for a sit down. Yesterday was a beautiful day in Sydney and the crowds were superb, the marathon seems to be getting bigger every year. I set off at a storming pace and was at the half way point in 1 hour 55 minutes and feeling good. I had seen the cheer squad a couple of times, got a high five from Blue, drunk lots of water and eaten the sweet energy bar thing. Things changed at about 30km though and I just seemed to loose all energy and really had to fight up the hill to Leichhardt, Eleri can tell you I was looking like a broken man at 32km when they saw me. They loaded me up with a banana and some powerade and I shuffled off again to do the final 10km. From there it was a run/walk affair where I had to set small goals like running all the way to the next drinks station rather than thinking the 8km was a long way to go yet. I struggled on through and stretched out some cramps to make it over the line in 4 hour 8 minutes and 38 seconds.

I was really happy to finish and had a great day, there should be photos coming on Tuesday night when Eleri gets back from Sydney with the camera. You can see my results at http://res.championchipaustralia.com/View.asp?id=1235&athID=5857 although the site is quite slow at the moment. Our friends Rae and Martin both did the half marathon in just over 2 hours so congratulations to them as well.

Thanks for all your support and donations, it makes a huge difference to know people are thinking of you whilst you are doing stupid things, next up Melbourne marathon!

5 days to go

2008-09-15T20:42:00.001+10:00

Thanks to all the donations over the last few days which have raced my tally up to within touching distance of $1000 which is fantastic. For all of you who haven't heard my history in marathon running it's about time that I actually wrote something about running on this blog. When I was working in London with Eddie he had signed up to run the marathon but wasn't really training too much. I started to go for runs at lunchtime with him with no intention of going beyond 10km but of course got sucked in and kept running and running and running. I think the experience of running around London along the banks of the Thames made it heaps of fun and I could set my training runs based on the landmarks. I'll just run up to Tate modern, cross the wobbly bridge and race back to westmister. Come raceday it was an amazing experience with heaps of supporters, a fantastic course and Eddie & I made it round without stopping. However, Eddie managed to beat me by 1 second in the official results and so I had to beat him. When I landed in Sydney without a job and wanting to find out a bit more about the city I entered the marathon and got training around the city. Unfortunately what I didn't count on was the complete lack of supporters and the hills which slowed me down to 4 hours 30 minutes. Eventually I managed to beat Eddie's time and now have a pb of 3 hours 38 minutes which I don't think I'll ever beat. If you are on facebook then I've put some photos and videos from my previous marathons at http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=34203670347 The best one is from London with Nick shouting as he captures Eddie and me turning for home in front of Big Ben.

Tanks stand up

2008-09-15T20:39:00.001+10:00

This weekend was hard at work with the tanks again, we started out putting the tanks together and standing them all up.

The next task was to replace the terracotta pipes which are full of mud with some nice new plastic ones. Taking out the pipes we found 2 things; 1 they are really heavy and 2 I had missed some of the pipes when exploring. It turns out our pipes converge from both sides of the house and exit the property via 1 storm drain. This is fantastic news as we can collect rain from the whole roof and feed it into the tanks but there is a little challenge as the drains on the front of the house are a bit blocked. Here I am exploring the other section of pipe while Callum works on the stuff we knew about.

Tanks arrive!

2008-09-07T19:13:00.001+10:00

If you have arrived here from my marathon sponsorship e-mails then a quick update. I've been running well since the horror run and am feeling a lot more positive about finishing the marathon this year. However, this weekend I skipped the long run and focused on the house and yard which is a lot more exciting. Over the past few months we have been working on the front yard and cleared the concrete to leave a big sandpit. This weekend we have been getting on with installing water tanks and improving the soil so that we can grow some vegies. We started off digging a trench to put the tanks in but stopped to take delivery of the the sand and soil.

I left Eleri and David digging the tank trench while Callum (our tank man) unloaded all the the bits and pieces to make the water from the roof end up in the tank.

You may notice that all the soil from the hole has been spread around the yard to give a base for the new soil and make it easier to get the sand into the trench.

Once the tanks arrived we had a good old measure and realised that I still can't count, add or subtract and shouldn't be a foreman. The trench was a little short and a little deep but we are sure that the tanks won't be sticking over the fence. Here I am looking grumpy and getting plenty of stick from the people who had been digging.

David then made sure that the rest of the plans were OK and I went back to the wheelbarrow to try and make ammends.

Once the tranch was full of sand we had a good old jump around to start bedding it in, we are going to leave it for a week and hope there is a good rain to compact the sand a bit more.

Once we had the sand in we broke for lunch and recharged the batteries to attack the soil and tanks in the arvo. Eleri lead from the front and showed us how to do it with the shovel and barrow.

Once we had the soil spread out then we put in the first tank to check for height which confirmed that we will have plenty of space for the filters to fit on the downpipes.

The we parked all the tanks in the front yard and compared blisters. I was amazed we managed to do so much in one day but it's great to see it all in place and looking fantastic.

We are now setup to put all the tanks together, stand them up and connect up the clever plumbing bits. Today I have been working on digging out the storm drain and clearing the gutters so that no rubbish gets in the tanks. I think it is the first time the gutters have been cleaned since the house was built so there might be some reno required on them too.

I have been running - I promise

2008-08-20T21:46:00.001+10:00

I know I have been fairly lax updating the blog but I don't have as much to talk about as Reenie with her dwarfs and Bek with her baking. I've been out running to try and get ready for 2 marathons and a 210km bike ride in one year. I must be crazy to think I've got a hope of finishing all events but it's worth a go. I'll soon be sending out the sponsorship requests to try and give me more motivation to keep doing the runs. About 2 weeks ago I went out for my long Sunday run which was supposed to be 29km but I got cramps in my right calf after 24km and then had to hobble/walk home from there. That was probably the worst I've ever felt during a training run and I almost packed it in then. Since then I have still been riding to work but finding excuses to miss some training sessions. I decided to give the long run another go last Sunday and got stuck into my 32km session pictured below.

The big positive from the run is that I made it! I ran 32km without stopping (aside for traffic) and have even managed to follow it up with riding to work and 12 sets of 400m sprints. I have an 8km run to do on Friday and then a short 24km run on Sunday ;-)

More Gardening

2008-07-20T16:32:00.001+10:00

As running can get a bit tedious and I wanted to carry on with the fun playing in the mud I have spent the morning hunting the storm drain and putting together a bin store. I ended up following the downpipe from the back of the house to the boundary. The plan is to put the water tank up against the fence and harvest the water from the storm drain. Once the tank is full then the water will overflow back into the storm drain.

Since we moved the gates forward then we couldn't hide the bins on the drive anymore so I used the tiles dotted round the front yard and pulled them together into one platform. It seems to hold my weight.

We have also seen a couple of programs giving tips on composting which showed us that our chuck it in and hope technique was not going to cut it. I've moved the compost bin and mixed it all up with some of the leaves from the drive and watered it in a bit so hopefully with some tlc it will come good. Here is the finished store with all the bins back in place.

Bargain Chairs

2008-07-19T20:41:00.001+10:00

David & Jocelyne came over for brunch this morning before a stroll up to the Posh Opp shop where we discovered some bargainous chairs. David has a rather offensive t-shirt for people whose French skills are a bit rusty translating as "I'm an idiot from Rodrigues" rather than "I'm crazy about Rodrigues" during Eleri's first attempt.

We snapped them up for $20 each and then took them for a stroll, stopping along the way to see if there was anything in Darn Cheap Fabric to liven them up with.

Jocelyne stayed outside and protected the chairs but we came out empty handed and a trip to Spotlight is now required.

Garden progress

2008-07-19T20:29:00.001+10:00

Since moving in we have been working on the front yard trying to clear out the space for planting a vegie garden. There are a few steps to getting this done like clearing the concrete, plants, adding a water tank and bizarelly moving the front gates. We started out with a bit of a jungle:

Which we cleared so that our local tradie could come and clear the concrete:

Despite the appearance Peter didn't manage to do it all by sledgehammer and ended up using a jackhammer to get through the 4 inches of reinforced concrete. Eleri had told me it might be a tough and I think that was some of the best money we have invested since we got the house. At the end of the weekend we had a massive skip full of concrete, steel, woody plants and almost a wife:

Since then Peter has been back and moved the gates forward to the boundary in line with the rest of the fence. This allows us to get to the front yard without opening up the gates and also stops people walking off the street onto the vegie patch.

So now we are getting on with clearing the front yard and finding the storm water drain so that we can divert it into the water tank:

The drain wasn't in that hole, have to keep trying elsewhere:

Sunday Training runs

2008-06-16T16:33:00.001+10:00

Am getting on with the training runs and have found a way of viewing the GPS results in Google Earth. I'm trying to get SportTracks to display the nicer graphs I've had before but these are from the Garmin suite and show where I've been.

This was a run I did in Sydney whilst I was visiting Mike and Lisa in their new flat. It was a 16km run along roads and footpaths with the path by the river side more of a scramble than a nice jog. Ended up with massive blisters on both feet and Eleri had to bandage my feet for a few days until they calmed down. After that I went back to the streets around Glen Huntly and survived a 20km run along the Yarra riverside which has slighlty more concreted paths. Looking forward to getting my first massage soon so that the legs don't ache every time I go up and down stairs.

Exercise + sweets = more weight?

2008-05-29T11:14:00.001+10:00

So having though that 80.8 kg was going to be my starting weight I have done a weeks cycling to work (15km each way) and thought I should check to see if it had made any impact. It most certainly has, up to 81.6kg which was a great start to the day. Austin keeps coming in saying his Wii fit is telling him he is over weight, I don't want to know what it would say if I got up on there. To try and kick start the weight loss, to help the training and feel less like a sack of potatoes I'm contemplating going off the booze and I'm definately going to cut down on cake and sweets. If you see me in the next few weeks I might be grumpy.

Starting weight

2008-05-26T14:46:00.002+10:00

Have just had birthday cake to celebrate Stephanie's birthday and it reminded me of my first weigh in this morning. I tried to wait until the morning when you are supposed to weigh the least so that it wasn't too much of a suprise. Unfortunately it did little to ease the pain as the scales shot up to 80.8 kg which is 12st 11lb in old money. I will put up my training plan in the coming weeks which as a nerd I have converted into a spreadsheet. It now shows training plans for 10km, half and full marathons and I will send it to you if you are interested.

Another training season starts!

2008-05-25T20:35:00.003+10:00

Hi All,

It's time to start the running again in 2008 but this year I'm pushing myself a bit further. I was thinking about running in one of those silly costumes but it's not the done thing over here so I might leave that for another year. I am doubling up though and going to run both the Sydney and Melbourne marathons to raise money for the Heart Foundation. My donation page is http://www.gofundraise.com.au/EdStephens and any support you can give will be greatly appreciated.

I'll update with starting weight and training plan soon so please keep visiting the site.

Ed

Official results in

2006-10-15T06:23:00.000+10:00

Eleri and I are now back from a great holiday in the UK where we both managed to put back on any weight lost in the last 6 months! Before I do all the tallying of the donations and pass all the money onto the Leukaemia Foundation I have found my official result from the Sydney Marathon.

My Result
Overall Results

Everything is fairly self explanatory on the results page but the Finish time and Net time might be slightly confusing. The finish time is the time from when the gun sounded to when I crossed the finish line. The net time is the time from my crossing the start line to crossing the finish line as recorded by the little chip on my shoe. From that you can tell it took me 17 seconds to cross the start line as all the elite guys headed of before me. I will post the final donation tally this week and pass the money onto the Leukaemia Foundation.

3:38, until the official results come out ;-)

2006-09-18T15:29:00.000+10:00

So yesterday was one of the most challenging marathons I have run. I now have 4 of them under my belt and have now completed the current Sydney course twice. As Eleri can testify, by 25km I was pretty much a running zombie and was only still running because I couldn't give up. I was in such a state for 3 reasons; I had run the first half of the course at 4m 50s pace which was slightly faster than planned, I had drunk too much as I was worried about the heat and I had just run through some steep hills through the city. Over the next 5kms I slowly deteriorated and was feeling sicker and sicker until I took 2 jelly beans. The sugar rush made me spin out and I had to slow to a walk to prevent being sick. This was the turning point, I could stop and give in to the pain or keep putting one foot in front of the other and get up Leichhardt hill which was just round the corner. I don't know if it was the 5 people that passed me whilst I was walking, the minutes rest or the jelly beans kicking in that gave me the impetus to start up again but I slowly starting running again. From then on I ran each kilometer as it came and set myself little targets to run to the corner in 1 minute or keep running all the way up the hill or get a cheer from 3 people by the next junction. All these distractions kept me going and each time I got a twinge of cramp in my calves I backed off a little until I felt good and then pushed again. So, as this posts title gives away, I made it home in approximately 3 hours and 38 minutes which is about 15 minutes better than my previous best! I could not be happier with the result and want to thank everyone who has helped me on my way to achieving this through moral support, training and sponsorship.

This is an image based on the GPS tracking that my watch took, unfortunately the tracking stops slightly short of the Opera House as the watch decided I had already run a marathon by then and stopped recording, I can assure you I did carry on to the finish line though ;-)

Heading to the airport

2006-09-15T18:04:00.000+10:00

Well I think I have done all I can do in preperation, I have run and run and run and then did some cross training and then run some more. I am now in carbo loading mode and will be stuffing my face full of pasta and potatoes and any other carbo rich food source I can find until Sunday. I'm looking forward to a beer aftewrwards to celebrate and will post my time up here as soon as possible.

Last long run

2006-09-11T17:18:00.000+10:00

So the final weekend before the marathon and I am officially on a taper, partly because of my bung knee which flared up again this weekend. After about 10kms running with the music from Chariots of Fire in my head, congratulating myself on how good my prep has been this year; then my knee woke up and said hello. If I now leave it in the same position for 30 minutes at a time it complains when I move it again. So this week is scheduled to be spent with mainly ice and the heat on my knee (alternately) until it craves the attention no more. Anyway, this picture shows the run from this weekend with satelitte image and pace graph which shows I was going at a fairly demon pace for me.

I am planning to do the marathon at 5 minutes per km so doing 16km at 4:40 was great for me as I still felt fine at the end. After about 8km I also tried out the energy mousse things they hand out on the course and it seemed to give some extra power to the legs as well. It's probably all in the mind but I shall carry some on the day to help me on my way.

It's the final countdown

2006-09-08T09:47:00.000+10:00

Ever since I mentioned the Sydney Marathon, Frank has been keen to point out to me that his pb is better than mine. His Melbourne Marathon effort was 3 hours 43 mins and has given me a new target to beat. Based on my first 2 marathons which were both in the 4 hours 20 mins mark I cut down to 3 hours 53 last year so I reckon it could go either way this year.

This is an image from my new gadget, a fancy pants GPS watch. As I am a nerd I can wear it with pride knowing the huge lump on my arm is going to create these funky graphs. It tells me everything about my run; heart rate, location, pace, elevation and will beep at me loudly when I need to work harder.

So the training this week has been Spin class, 3 x 1600m sprints (see above picture), Spin Class, today is a 13km run and 16km on Sunday. Hopefully these runs should be nice and easy as I got a sports massage from Barbara last night and she gave my legs a clean bill of health. Then the tapering really begins with a few walks in the park next week and some serious mental preparation in the pub.

You can't give a baby booze

2006-09-02T19:54:00.000+10:00

Not until their 18 at least. It's 2 weeks to marathon time and last week I gave up booze. Not a drop of beer, wine, whisky, vodka, tequila, pernod or any other alcoholic liquid has passed my lips. The final week of booze was during our ski holiday in NZ and so I made sure to have a good send off! Fortunately all my limbs are in tact from a great week of playing on my new snowboard and my noggin was saved a couple of times by my new helmet.

Aside from galavanting to NZ I have been keeping up my new training regime which is a little different from last year. Previously, the core of my training plan was running and used hills, sprints, distance and frequency to improve my running style. This time I am limited to 3 runs a week; 1 sprints, 1 pace and 1 distance run. Outside of these 3 runs I can do any other cross training I like. This has meant I have been to Spin classes, played soccer, been mountain biking and used the gym a lot more. It's definately been a lot more fun and time will tell whether it has worked better. On the other hand, at the moment I have an ice pack on my knee from where I came off my mountain bike this arvo and I'm waiting for Eleri to return with the wheat bag to get some hot on there. 18 months at least ;-)

Another year, another marathon!

2006-08-14T19:49:00.000+10:00

I have no idea how to justify this year's marathon. I had been labouring under the illusion that I was trying to set a personal best against my first marathon buddy Eddie. However, last year I stormed home in 3 hours and 53 minutes which knocked 27 minutes off my previous personal best and made me the fastest Ed I know. Thanks to everyone's generosity I also managed to raise a chunk of money for the Leukaemia Foundation in the process. So what can I say this time, maybe it's because I turned 30 this year, maybe I am worried about getting a pot belly, maybe I'm trying to beat Frank from the office who has a pb of 3 hours and 43 minutes but eventually I may have to admit that I enjoy plodding along for 42 kms. Anyway, this is the start of the journey again and it's time to start counting down to September 17th when I will be running the Sydney marathon for the Leukaemia Foundation again.