My arms got tired and I just wanted to give up but Goldilocks and Shrek were below watching my every move. The slope wasn’t too big but it was challenging. All I wanted to do was let go and have Goldilocks lower me down to the ground but she didn’t. So I kept trying until I figured out what to hold on to and was able to climb to the top of the wall.

She had faith in me or the more likely explanation is that she just enjoyed watching me struggle. It felt great to reach the top. The rest of the day we climbed other walls, had fun doing it and got a decent upper body workout in the process.

Today I was planning to run a 32 km. It was part of my marathon training. The weather was great and I felt really good, so after my first 16 km run I thought that I should try running a full marathon i.e 42.2 km. 10K’s here or there didn’t really matter, I thought.

I thought wrong. The last 10 km were pretty difficult and I slowed down a fair bit. I wasn’t able to pace myself correctly for the whole distance. I was pretty happy once I finished. After all, this is a personal best for me – longest run so far. It took me 4h and 5min to finish.

It would be great if I was able to run a marathon faster than 3:08 – like my aunt did – but it seems that goal is too ambitious to achieve in 7 weeks. At least I know that I will finish the Uluru marathon. Today’s run gave me a decent confidence boost which I badly needed.

The thing is… for several weeks I’ve been having trouble making new personal best times and I’ve been taking a bunch of days off from running because of various pains in my legs. I was starting to doubt myself and after today’s run…

Life.

Is.

Good.

Again.

Part of my motivation was probably from Goldilocks. Yesterday she pushed me to try harder when I wanted to give up climbing that wall. I remembered how good it felt to reach the top. Today I wanted to feel that way again and I pushed myself a bit harder. It was difficult to wipe that smile off my face during my cool down walk. I really was enjoying that moment. Success!

Ivar