Mummy, my legs hurt

Hi everyone! It's now well under 50 days till race day and I hope everyone is hanging in there. Me? I'm mostly managing OK apart from the odd meltdown and freak out!! Some of the resources coming through on the Rapid Ascent facebook page have been a lifesaver for me. Sam's course run-throughs are brilliant for an out-of-towner like me, really helping me to get my head around the course. And David Eadie's live Q&A session in particular really helped me last week to get some perspective and acknowledge that 'it's ok not to feel good at this point in your training'. I have a few niggles but am not particularly injured - I'm just getting exhausted by the constant self-talk: am I doing the right thing, am I training too much, not enough, and what have I got myself into!? That Q&A helped put so many fears to rest and just having some validation that the seemingly excessive amount of walking I'm doing is perfectly fine and will stand me in goo...

Where: Middle Head, off Chowder Bay Rd Distance: 5.5km Duration: a bit over 2 hours Richie comes up with all the good ideas. Today we decided to go east for a change, heading towards the harbour to explore middle head forts. Complete with underground tunnels dating back to the 1870s and lots of gun turrets, ammunition stores and lookout points, it was a fantastic place to bring the kids. Very little was 'out of bounds' and they could go in around and over all the old structures, which kept them interested for a couple of hours.  The forts were built in the 1870's, used later during WWII, and the area is still active today with HMAS Penguin naval hospital located at the site. Although it was mid morning on a weekend, we only saw a handful of other people, and had lots of space to run around and explore. Apart from a few sketchy cliff edges and former ammunition stores to fall into like the one below, it was a great place for the little peo...

Near Woy Woy NSW Distance: 2.5km Duration: 45 minutes Today we explored Bouddi national park along the very easy boardwalk that begins at Putty Beach and goes for over 8km. We did a small stretch up to Gerrin Point lookout as we had been out for a family lunch earlier that day so the kids weren't up to a big day out. Unfortunately the time of day also meant we had to dodge a lot of people; this one is popular on sunny days, especially when we were there right at the start of whale season. This boardwalk is fantastic in that it hugs the coastline but is open so that you can step off and explore the amazing rock formations and get closer to the coastal views. This might be a bit hairy for smaller kids who are liable to run off a cliff but for our 7 and 9 year olds it was a good adventure. There are some sections early on with stairs, and let's be honest, nobody likes stairs. Apart from that it's mostly open coastal heath interspersed with s...