Is Shinjury A Word? (If Not, It Jolly Well Should Be)

First, great news on the fundraising front -  the donation-o-meter is now at $7991.00, an absolutely amazing amount!! (Don't worry, I can count! $1070.00 of that has been raised off-line and so doesn't show up under the 'Donations So Far' counter at right.) The half way point was passed only a few weeks ago and since then almost $3000.00 has come in. Unbelievable. When you think about what the SEE Solutions project can do with just $100.00, an amount of money like this is going to do some serious good. Hoorah!

And tickets are ready to go for our 'Red Dog' movie fundraiser. It's on Friday the 12th of August at 9.30am at the Cygnet Cinema in Preston St, Como. $30.00 includes the movie (obviously!), champagne and nibbles and well as the chance to win some great door prizes! We will also be having a raffle and selling tickets for that on the day. The lovely Dee, my friend and official Novice Supreme physiotherapist, has kindly offered to organise the ticket sales for me so if you would like some, and I do so hope you will, please give her a call on 0427 2727 32.

This week's training was ... ok. My shins have been misbehaving; it felt like there were metal plates jiggling up and down on the outside of my lower leg. It's no doubt from overuse (and trying to pick up the speed a bit as well) and it's meant that I've had to walk for parts of my training runs this week. Disappointing. But, this didn't feel like the kind of pain I should push through and, since injury is Enemy Number One of the potential marathoner according to the 'Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer', I thought I'd better be Sensible. I didn't want a shin injury (a shinjury, even).

It was in this spirit of shin-saving cross-training that I went for a 6 hour walk along the last part of the lovely Bibbulmun Track with my father-in-law today, instead of the 5km 'long run' scheduled for this week. We walked from Ball Creek, which is out past Mundaring Weir (looking kind of empty and sad) to Kalamunda, about 21km in total. It was a beautiful day, sunny with a cool breeze and we managed to keep up a fairly decent pace over some fairly decent hills. It was hard work but no sore shins (sore just about everything else though). 

No-one who knows Tom needs to ask who this is

Morning tea at the 5km mark. This humble apricot slice powered us through 16 more kilometres

We worked really hard today but at least my shins got a rest from pavement pounding. I hope they appreciate it and behave themselves this week as I get on to Week 4 of the Novice Supreme (Expurgated Version) and this week's 9km long run in particular. 

By the way, one of my fellow Perth marathoners, the lovely Holly Ord, is running for Cure Cancer. She has set up a blog, 42km's Closer to a Cure, and a recent post contains a wonderful description of the New York Marathon route. I got excited (and slightly terrified) as I read it. You can check it out here!