The Mother of all Classics – Musings on Monday 15 May 2017

Welcome to my weekly Monday Musings  

The Mother of all Weeks – 

We’ve just celebrated Mother’s Day here in the land down under (and other places too) with lots of celebrations and sales of soaps, slippers and scarves.  I had a chuckle at the groups of  youngsters out shopping for that perfect gift for mum or grandma.  I also enjoyed reading a variety of posts from bloggers with their own individual take on Mother’s Day; some wished for a simple visit from their grown up children; while others wished for a day of doing nothing; others wrote of missing their mothers and how mothers have impacted on all our lives.  It was heartwarming!

Since 2014 I have participated in the 5km Mother’s Day Classic in Canberra and this year’s event was billed as the Mother of all Classics. In previous years I have run with my daughter and son-in-law but this year, due to injury, I was on my own. I had a good run but not my best and not the time I wanted to do.  There are a number of reasons why:

• I have trained hard but I always run alone and when I’m in a big crowd I lose my head and go out too hard too early.  I need to get more runs with groups under my belt to feel comfortable sticking to my own pace.
• My choice of tights and undies did not co-exist very well.  I realised this in the first few seconds and I wasted valuable energy continually pulling up my tights 🙂  Note to self: Next time practice running in chosen attire!
• Since I went out too fast I was running low on energy towards the end, although funnily enough I felt at my best in kilometres 3 and 4.
• I latched onto two ladies who were running at my pace and heard one of them ask if the other one wanted to stop and walk but she said “no, I’m not going to stop, I may be slow but I’ll keep running”.  I thought they sounded like my type of runners so I stayed with them for the last kilometre or so.  A few times I started to slow down and they kept me going and wouldn’t let me slow to a walk.  They were fantastic and took me under their wings, so to speak, encouraging me to continue running until the end.  I can’t thank them enough for their support.  I have no idea who they were but feel a connection with them.  They also thanked me for helping them get through it which I thought was nice!  Women helping other women in action!
• I am determined to continue going as I want to get down to under 30 minutes.  I have just a few minutes to shave from my time.
• I reminded myself that it’s all about ‘progression not perfection’ and consider myself lucky to be able to run at all 🙂

Mother’s Day Classic turns 20

The Mother’s Day Classic celebrated 20 years this year and I’m proud to have been involved for the last few years.  It started out in 1998 with walks in the park in just Sydney and Melbourne and has evolved to 91 events this year in metro and regional areas.  The event is in aid of the National Breast Cancer Foundation and all money raised goes towards research into this most common life threatening cancer facing Australian Women.  Apparently 8 women die every day from this disease. Source

Everyone was given a medal for their participation and I have added it to my collection – after wearing it all day of course  🙂  The banana after the race was much more useful at the time!!

My official results made me smile.  Overall I came 584 from 1112 runners; 33 out of 89 runners in my age category (which was the 50-59 group) and I was 367 out of 786 female runners.  So for a 56 year old female runner I’m feeling quite chuffed!  I went back and collected my previous year’s results just to compare and I found I’m really quite consistent, not fast, but not too shabby either!

2014 Results from Mother’s day Classic

2015 Results from Mother’s day Classic

2016 Results from Mother’s day Classic

2017 Results from Mother’s Day Classic

Weekend of fun:

My daughter and son-in-law cooked a delicious breakfast after my run, and over the weekend we shopped, drank champagne while out shopping at a conveniently placed Champagne Bar, watched movies, had a pedicure, ate out, went for a long walk together AND I was given awesome presents.  A WonderWoman mug, card and jumper (a theme perhaps, but then I am known as WonderWomanDebs).  My two other daughters sent messages and presents too, so I’m very spoilt.  I must thank my husband for his support because without him I wouldn’t be a mother at all!

Race number and pink pedicure

I also sent messages to my mother and my mother-in-law, both of whom have been very instrumental in my life. They are both very special women.

I have been a mother for 34 years and have happy memories of past Mother’s Days, although some are sharper than others.  My daughter reminded me of their efforts in making me milky cups of tea in bed along with ‘shows’ they produced for my benefit.  As I wrote in a recent post my daughters are all born around this time so we always had fun with birthdays and Mother’s Day celebrations during May.

I wish all my readers a Happy Mother’s Day!

Blogging updates:

My favourite post from last week was Reflections on my latest love affair in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge. I think I’m done with my autumn photos for this year, now that I’ve got them out of my system in  recent posts!!

For Wordless Wednesday I shared a photo of the beautiful view over our town with the smoke haze giving it the effect of looking like a painting.  I also managed to do another Share Your World which resulted in a few readers joining in with this fun challenge. The more the merrier!!

I couldn’t let the fact that a year ago last week we were informed that our education jobs in correctional centres would be downgraded to clerical jobs and Education would be outsourced to external providers.  I love reading my posts from this time last year as I was soooo angry!  I also managed to incorporate this craziness into my 52 world challenge – A Crazy place!

From other bloggers:

I read this great post from Steph at Scale it Simple and it resonated with me.  I think she’s saying exactly what I was trying to say in a recent post, where I admitted to being confused about blogging and all the advice that’s out there for the ‘perfect’ post, how to gain followers, how to make money from blogging…..have a read!

Mondays are for musing and mulling over the week so feel free to join me.

I’d love to know what you’ve been up to.

Deb 🙂

You can also follow Deb’s World here:

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