Celebration weekend Part 1. A bridge to climb.

A celebration weekend. A celebration of many things - birthdays, actual weight loss and for me maintaining the weight loss!! And what better way to celebrate that to do a famous climb and a famous run!!

I am currently feeling very grown up! I have never gotten myself to and on a plane before -- and was slightly freaked out by the thought -- but I did it!! LOL! Parked my car in the long term parking, got the shuttle bus to the domestic zone, checked in and made it onto the plane BY MYSELF!! How good am I!! I even picked the RIGHT plane!! YAY! I then got off in Sydney and found the train I needed, put myself on it and managed to get off at the right station! EVEN BETTER!! Haha!! Was very thankful to have someone to meet me at the other end though -- would hate to have to find the hotel all my myself! Definitely would have gotten losted!!

I have to admit to being a little worried about the weekend given the status of my left knee. I have been realising lately how bad it has gotten. The eye opening moments were in a pump class when I looked in the mirror and saw myself doing a squat. I was leaning all the way to the right and basically doing a one legged squat and just having my left leg rest on the floor.... and the other was when I decided the way to go was to strengthen the left leg... I jumped on the leg press - stuck a 25kg plate on it and tried to lift it AND IT WOULDN'T MOVE!!! Bahahaha!!!! I had to take the weight off and do it with no weights -- and even THEN I could only get out 6 reps!! LOL!

Given that the 2 events I had on the menu for the weekend involved hills and stairs I was a little worried!! Saturday morning came around and one of the buddies who I was with marched me down to Priceline and got me to purchase a couple of knee brace things which I wore for the rest of the day - Let me just say -- Best. Things. Ever! My knees felt 100% better by sat night!! Which was good because I am not sure how comfy they would have been to run in -- and I make it a point to NEVER do anything different on race day!!

My only other problem was that I felt like I had been run over by a TRUCK!! Tafe both that week and the week before had us doing serious weights for HOURS!! OMGosh!! There was not one muscle on my body which had not been absolutely smashed over the last couple of weeks -- and I really don't think my body was recovering properly from it .... I felt like a massive semi had rolled over me a couple of times!! My particular problem on this weekend given the stairs and hills were my BUTT muscles and hamstrings... I seriously looked like the BIGGEST idiot I am sure as I spent most of Saturday and Sunday morning doing dynamic stretching and leg swings etc... If I stopped moving them they cramped up!! Haha!! At least I can now say I have a really intimate relationship with my butt muscles.  How many people can say that??

The actual climb was a really awesome experience. There was a moment at the start where I started to freak... but then I thought -- who cares if you die anyway... you wont be around for it to bother you and your only going to die once!! And then I was fine. LOL!!