The Simple Life...

I've been meaning to write. I like to write. It's nice when I have time to do it...

I'll start where I left off... World Champs. Needless to say, it was a disaster in the sense that I couldn't race. I wrote an article for Jock Athletic Ezine about my experience from the world championships here:
http://issuu.com/jockathletic/docs/jock_ezine_issue_10_v2
This pic with my dad and brother in the stands the night of the women's 10k... it was a long way for them to come to sit next to me in the stands... but I'm glad they did. The line up. Then part taking in a little bit of Korean Culture, the Korean bbq! Huge hit!

After Korea, I had a couple of Love Mercy speaking opportunities lined up. So Jony and I and Caity and Luke flew up to the Gold Coast, for Fortnum Financial Advisors conference where I got to share about Julius's life and tell the Love Mercy story to a room full of financial planners. From this night alone, they raised $22,000 for Love Mercy. I am continually blessed and blown away by people's generosity and willingness to support our work in Uganda. We then flew to Melbourne to share said story to a bunch of keen year 10 students at Maribyrnong Sports Academy. The kids are organising a fun run next month for Love Mercy called "Run with Purpose". These opportunities to share about Love Mercy and Northern Uganda's plight couldn't have come at a better time, post world champs, it reminded of me of what's important and why I'm running in the first place...

Jony and I had a holiday for a week in our camper van. There is nothing more relaxing to me than to drive along the coast, stopping in at cutesy little country towns, perusing through the little boutiques and organic cafe's that make places like Milton and Eden... no immediate plans, no firm destination, just to cruise in search for good surf and nice pubs to eat dinner at. We realised along the way that we like the smaller communities, as fruity as this might sound, we like the feeling of being "hugged" by a town. So we got all the way down to Bells Beach in Torquay, 8 ft off shore, amazing waves, like all Jony's Christmas's had come at once, fun to watch. We camped here for 3 nights, whale watched, ate meals at the local surf cafe and home cooked a few at the camping ground, watched Australia Versus Ireland in the Rugby at the pub- where I moronically donned a pair of green jeans which gained me the love of all the Irish supporters in the place but Jony almost disowned me, he said I'd renounced my Australian citizenship then and there. Ireland won, adding salt to his wound of my green jeans. 


Here's a little bit of my rants whilst we were living the simple life:


You know you're living in a camper van when...


You find yourself pocketing extra toilet paper from the pub ladies room
You brush your teeth daily in a beach carpark
You're reliant on the sun to be out to have a solar powered shower
Silence becomes your fondest playlist
You're so relaxed you consider rolling your own
Your hair smells a bit
Cooking organic porridge in the morning requires a nap afterwards
You're unsure if the yellow liquid in the drink bottle is your morning berrocca or the result of your husby's un-want of getting up in the night to pee...
You get overly excited at the sight of other campers doing the same as you
You wish you could live this simply forever and then realise you can take the simplicity home-  to be ok with just doing nothing sometimes... just being.

Because we've been away a fair bit since Korea, I haven't seen my family alot. Last weekend an email arrived in my inbox from my Dad, attached were newspaper articles he'd been collecting for me whilst I was away. All of the articles were on how other athletes deal with disappointments in their life and sport, how they put them in perspective and how they grow stronger and move forward. He'd been collecting these whilst I was away, he'd underlined and highlighted the gold. My dad is gold. Encouragement is truly oxygen to the soul.