Welcome to bethepigeon

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Why are we here? 

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It has been 7 years since I nearly drowned on an embarrassingly short swim adventure out at Blackrock beach. The sea salt on my wounded pride and the immediacy of my own mortality jolted me into reality. I was deathly unfit. It was time to take health seriously.

And so began my appetite for exercise.  Its been a long, journey but I think I am on the right path, I have had the same personal trainer who shouts at me twice a week  for the last 6 years, briefly  joined the circus (NICA night classes to be more precise), competed in a few obstacle races , and have even attempted a marathon...  

Fast forward to July 2019, - Life sometimes throws you curve-balls, and I was in a pretty dark place, so I was looking to take on new challenges and snap out of it.  As luck would have it, or destiny, an advert for "The Mongol 100" appeared on my Facebook. As I had never been a great runner, I thought this might be the perfect challenge but truthfully, I was not sure I was up to it.

I must have watched the promotional video 80 times, and in the end the inspirational music got to me, so I  signed up. The Mongol 100 basically involves running 100-miles (160km) over 4 days over a frozen lake in -30-degree Celsius temperatures in outer Mongolia and sleeping in Ger tents.  I wanted to push myself way out of my comfort zone, and this seemed to be it! 

Bearing in mind, I had not run more than a 14 km the whole year, so my training started with a half marathon at the beginning of September, which took, like forever (2 hours, 32 to be precise). My training stepped up after that, and I have snuck in two 50km races since then, the only minor complication being acute renal failure after the Gold Coast 50km but that's for another blog.

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Everything changed in February 2020 for everyone because of the Rona, and that included the cancellation of my long-anticipated Mongol 100. Not to be deterred, I quickly signed up to The NZ Ring of Fire race around an active volcano, but thanks to Jacinta, that got cancelled too. 

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Nevertheless, to keep my fitness up, I ran a 150-metre loop around my house and driveway. 12 hours later, I ended up running 54 kilometres! I followed this up with a 100 km around-the-neighbourhood race in May, 2020,

I then managed to walk/run 1 100 000 steps in a month, while promoting the ethos of Be the pigeon (Empower Yourself, Empower Others , Be Kind) and raising money for the Fred Hollows Foundation.

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I am planning a rather ambitious project next- Pigeon accross Australia , but am finalising sponsorship as well as the admin behing such an event - Basic details are here , and if you want to help somehow please let me know :-) 

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Be kind!

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