Point Chevalier I

Our Interview with Robyn 15/12/11

Hi Robyn.  Tell us a bit about your relationship with sport and exercise    
I danced until I was 18, and then I went to university and didn't exercise as much and put a whole lot of weight. Then I went over on my OE and there I met my current partner and both of us just decided to start losing weight together, we started to exercise more, and were more physical in our recreation time. We came back to New Zealand, and he decided to do the Auckland marathon and I was like:”you are crazy”! And he did it, he really liked it and wanted to do it again. Then we decided to do the Cathay Pacific Half Marathon. I did that, and I got 2.22.22 - I couldn’t have stopped the clock at a better time!

And that helped your parents get involved too?
Yes, that year that I did half marathon, both my mum and dad happened to be in Auckland so they came and watched us and said they would do it with us next year so the following year 4 of us lined up for the half marathon. We all finished and I did a better time than a year before. And then just sort of kept running, and I did one of these triathlon events a few years ago. I just like the feeling, the endorphin rush. I was training for an Auckland half marathon a few years ago, and sprained my ankle quite severely, it all dropped of for 6 weeks, and I got very depressed. Then it took me a while to get back into it and there weren’t many endorphin rushes over that period.

What Changed?
I then really wanted to do a triathlon event again; I really like the idea of three different sports. And I thought: “I’ll just enter the Contact TriWoman series this year. And then I saw the TRI IT GIRLS promotion”. We’d been in a car accident a few years back, and my mum had had severe whiplash, it had taken over her life and so she had not been exercising. But now, she's so fantastic, she is out there now, she rang me on Sunday and she had done a 10 km cycle. To my mum, that is a massive deal; having not learnt how to ride a bike when she was a kid, she was sensitive about it. She had been on a road, she had cycled for 10 km, and she was so excited. And all I said was “Yay!”, and then she said: “oh, I did it in 32min, is that all right?” What a great time too!

In terms of preparation, how are you getting on with your training and how are you training?
At the moment, I am playing Wii with my kids! I already had fairly good basic fitness, and so I still go for a 6km run, and I occasionally cycle to school. The thing that I don’t probably do enough of is swimming. It’s one of those things that I should probably do a bit more of. So it is just managing to fit in time. We have got an exercise bike is set up in front of the TV so I do that sometimes too so if I don’t get out, I can still do it. It's just fitting it in the time, that’s my biggest challenge. 

So do you reckon a little bit everyday is much better than a massive workout once a week?
Oh God yeah. I mean if you think about it, it is not a huge distance you have to cover in a Contact TriWoman event. So if you are going to kill yourself once a week, you're really not going to get as motivated. And you mioght not feel great afterwards. Whereas if you do a little bit, you are going to make progress too. It’s just the same when we teach kids maths; we don’t give them one big, whole topic and then say go and study that for a week. We do little bit by little bit, by little bit. So they get confident and they make progress they can see.

Do you have any suggestions for other participants?
Make sure you don’t let it rule your life; there is no gold medal for first when you are doing this sort of event.  You are just trying to beat yourself. And you are trying to prove yourself you can do it. So if you miss a training, you miss a training. It is not the end of the world. If you have  a day where you feel like blobbing out and eating a whole box of chocolate and drinking a whole bottle of wine, do it, its’ ok. But there is a thing about moderation as well. Just enjoy it. Enjoy it is probably my biggest tip: enjoy it. And if you feel like you're doing too much, and you don’t want to get out there all the time, you are probably overdoing it. And so you have got to do it to the point where you enjoy it, otherwise the whole point of it is null and void. You look at Olympic athletes: they only do it because they love it. And the ones who start to not love it, they quit. So if you are not enjoying it, you are doing something wrong. And it probably means you are just overworking yourself.

Do you get support from your friends/colleagues/others?
One of my colleagues is also a runner, so we will occasionally go for a run, and we will help each other get motivated.  The people at work know that I am slightly insane, because I do like to run half marathons.  And I did a boot camp earlier this year, they get that I am that kind of person that will do things like this. Everyone is really happy about it, so they will be like” oh so it’s just you Robyn”, my mum and dad too.  My other half, who cycles to work everyday is the one when I can't be bothered, who will encourge me to do something.  So everyone gives me that little push when I need it.

Any words of motivation?
There is something I always tell my kids and I try to live by is: believe you can, and you will. If you believe you can do something, you will do it. If you don’t have that belief that you can do it, and the only person whose belief you really need is your own, then you won’t. 

So believe you can and you will!

Thanks Robyn!

 Update 19/01/12

Wow, I can't believe that race day is this weekend. It only seems like yesterday that I was filling in the registration form hoping to inspire my mum to get back into some exercise. I'm both nervous and excited about the event itself - nervous about getting into somewhat cold water, nervous that I'm going to get off my bike and my legs turn to jelly, nervous that I haven't done enough training. On the other hand excited that Mum will be out there with me, getting on the bike has been her biggest challenge and she has overcome it to compete with me.
School holidays started with a cruise so training dropped to one 20 min treadmill and one 20 min stationary bike ride for ten days only to arrive back to what I could hardly consider weather conducive to enjoyable exercise. However as the weather has cleared another mission stood in front of me...the Tongariro crossing. I've done it before but I wanted to do it again to prove that losing some weight, being fitter and with a more positive mindset could work. And it did....5 hours of walking on Monday and I crossed the Crossing. I know that having done this, the triathlon will be a much easier task but I'm sure, you like me, has a nagging little voice that wants to overall your logical, well trained mind. We just need to turn that little voice off.
I can't wait to finish on Sunday, and by my calculations I reckon Mum and I will be finishing together....
Look forward to seeing you on Sunday in those snazzy new togs!!

(I'll be the one on a mountain bike with a basket at the front!)