Craig Bulloch

So yes….injured! But I am looking at it positively…..it has given me plenty more time to get some study sorted for the upcoming exam on Tuesday. A cheeky wee 15 min exam that if I were to fail I would have to resit the year! Not really worth thinking about to be honest!!!!!

So my injury is in my hip so haven’t been for a run or bike for a few days. I guess if I didn’t have uni stuff to do then I would be going mad!!! Well some of you may already think I’m a tad on the insane side….and you wouldn’t be wrong. I have to say that the team at Bodyneed have been absolutely wonderful again and I should be back out on the streets by the middle of this week!!!

So as I have nothing else to talk about…..I am issuing a challenge. For those of you who have been reading this blog and hopefully thought about getting out and doing some fitness……how about getting a team together for a wee friendly race (when I am involved it will turn pretty competitive pretty quick with some smack talk being spoken!!! But all in fun of course!!!!). What I was thinking was using the Karipiro Half Ironman as the event and teams of three can go head to head. I will put a cup on it!!! And will run it each year. Not always at the Karipiro half but at others as well. And after we can all head back to my place in Hamilton for a BBQ! The date will be early November so plenty of time to get sorted for it. Teams of three go head to head to promote healthy activity and mental health….come on people what do you say???????

I already have a team and have had interest from others. It would be awesome to get 10 or so teams involved in it. I am sure we can do it.

Anyway let me know your thoughts.

I hope everyone is well.

Take care

Craig

P.S: Check out Mission Nutritions blog and find out some great healthy eating tips.

Yes I know that is a cheesy heading….you either, laughed, cringed or haven’t even read past the heading. But I must admit the train spotters out there will realise that I aren’t writing this on the 4^th of May but I was hoping to get a smile!

So yes a 20 km run was part of my training (Kathy it was only 10mins longer than you had given in my programme!!!!) I was absolutely chuffed with it and my body held up pretty well. You have to love the country when the weather is like this!!!!! I pretty much run out the door when I have training.

Along with training it has been a head down arse up week for uni since I have assignments and exams coming up. It does makes training interesting though when I can study at the same time…that sort of study usually consists of picking out which muscles are hurting the most!!!

I really have nothing else to report so I will sign off here and get stuck into the study!!!! The next couple of weeks will be pretty similar. But I will get some pictures up of my travels!!!!!

I hope all is well.

Take care

Craig

It is with a heavy heart that I am writing this week’s blog. A close family friend was taken all too early from us last week. It has been an emotional time with a lot of tears but also laughter and reminiscing about what a wonderful person BJ was. Words cannot do justice to the sort of man he was. Just sitting listening to the people at the funeral I come to realise how lucky we all were to have such a special person in our lives. One person described him as a limited edition and that summed him up perfectly. I was asked to speak on behalf of the family and was able to hold it together the most part. It was a beautiful ceremony and a celebration of a man’s life that put everyone else first.

BJ you are gone but will never be forgotten. Thank-you for being such a wonderful person to my parents. You and Margaret Ann were there for them when I was at my lowest and I will be forever indebted to you for that. You were taken from us way to young but I know you are at peace now. Go well my friend.

It is funny how times like this bring different people together. And over this last few weeks we have made some connections with some wonderful people and have made bonds that will last a life time. Things happen for a reason we sometimes never know what the reason is for a while.

Remembrance is a golden chain

Death tries to break, but all in vein

To have, to love and then to part

Is the greatest sorrow of one’s heart

The years may wipe away many things

But some they wipe away never

Like memories of those happy times

When we were all together

Take care everyone

Craig

Where are the weeks going? I have finished my first (or second….the weeks are morphing into one at the moment) week of training. I love being back into it again but phew it feels like I am starting at the trainer wheels stage again! I can’t have lost all my fitness but it sure feels like it does! I did however run my quickest 5k ever the other day so I must be doing ok!

I would love to be able to let you sit back as I tell you some tales of how my week of training went but to be honest it was uneventful. This for me is a good effort. No trucks tried to side swipe me, no boats tried to run me over and no one decided to shoot me with a paintball gun (for those of you new to this blog these are all the things that happened to me last year!!!!). So all in all it was a pretty low key week! I did however have a freak out when I was meant to go to the medical school for uni.

Since I have no good training stories I will bore you with this one!!!! It is safe to say I have a massive phobia of hospitals. I usually end up on the bed next to the person I am going to see in hospital or in the worse case on the floor! We were all booked to go to the medical school to learn more about human anatomy. I won’t go into detail for the squeamish out there (dad I know you wouldn’t want to hear all the gory details). I was ok the first time I went there but for some reason this time I totally got spooked and there was nothing on this planet that was going to make me step inside the room. So I made some very lame excuse and was a no show. As you may well be thinking (if you weren’t before you will be now) how the hang can he be a physio if he can’t step foot in a hospital???? And don’t worry that very question has crossed my mind to. I have, with some coaxing from a uni friend to take on some counseling to make sure that this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. So don’t fret people if you are lucky (or unlucky depending on how you look at it) to have me as a physio in hospital I will NOT end up on the floor!!!!! You heard it here first!

So there we go. That’s my little “things you didn’t know about Craig” segment done and dusted. I better now get back to learning the anatomy of the body like I was meant to in medical but this time it’s only in books!

I hope you all had a fantastic Easter and am having a great week

Take care

Craig

Holy smoke…. is pretty much all I can say about this morning’s training session. It was pretty bloody awesome. Tough but good (Kathy skip this part and start from the next paragraph!!!!) So I decided to take on the stairs at Bucklands beach. Those of you that have been out there will possibly know what I am talking about. Yeah there is only 75-80 of them (I kept losing count towards the top because I was a little jaded!) but when you do them in as quick as you can then throw in some sit ups, press ups and burpees in between each set it’s safe to say…..the stairs will own you! Well they owned me anyway. And what a fantastic feeling it was. I was able to walk back to the house (just) with a massive smile on my face thinking that I have just done something that, a year ago, I thought would never be possible. I pushed myself so hard today and didn’t make up excuses about why I couldn’t do it. I even had to take a double take when I was strapping on my shoes….I was looking forward to the punishment I was about to inflict on myself!!!!!

 Kathy you can start reading again- for those of you who don’t know Kathy is my coach and I am sure if she read that last paragraph she will be shaking her head and thinking “my god he is going to cause me more issues this year!!!! “

The last couple of Thursday nights I have been lucky enough to catch up with a few amazing people who are and will be still a massive part of my Ironman journey. Chris and Karen from Bodyneed thank you so much for your company last week in Ponsonby- I promise next time I won’t turn up looking like I have just come from uni! (Well I had just come from uni). You guys are absolutely amazing and I am lucky to have met you on this journey I am on. And last night I was able to spend some time with another amazing person. (How many times can I say amazing in two lines!!!!) Tania thank you so much for last night and thank you to your company FPE for getting behind me for this next year. I also am looking forward to running next to you in one of the half marathons coming up! I struggle to put into words how greatful I am of EVERYONE that I have come into contact with over this IM journey of mine. You are all bloody fantastic (didn’t want to use amazing again) people and will always be close to my heart. Phew I think I am getting soft in my old age!!!!

Anyway my friends I better get back to my uni work. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that I now know every muscle that is hurting in my body when I work out because I am sure that not all of them are meant to be hurting!!!!

Take care

Craig

Roll up roll up here it is. As promised I am now back from a few weeks off. Well deserved to I think!!!! But I hope I can get back into it like where I left it. Writing a blog is like riding a horse or so I have been told. To be honest I hope it’s not because the last time I was on a horse I got thrown off!!! So going by that this could end in disaster! But fingers crossed it doesn’t!!!

I have officially signed up again for next year’s Ironman! And I really can’t wait to get back into the swing of things! There will be the ups and downs and you will read them and possibly just possibly you might get to see some of it on you tube.

Once again I will be doing all for the Mental Health Foundation. This past year has been a fantastic journey for me and I have changed my life for the better and the feedback I have got I have been able to help others out and this is what I was aiming for.

So please keep coming back each week to keep up to date and if you want a training buddy or a chat my contacts can be found on the contacts page.

Take care everyone

Craig

To whom it may concern,

You maybe thinking where the weekly blogs from moi have gone. Well let me reassure you all that look over this page on a daily basis (mum and dad) I will start back into the weekly ramblings very very soon!!!! But dont worry you haven’t missed much in my life….in fact Uni, Man Cold, Uni….that would pretty much be it!!!

So please keep checking and by friday there will be a new post……

Take care

Craig

So here it is. The wash up of what was meant to be the day that signified so much to me but which was taken away from me by something that was out of my control….the weather.

Before I start I must thank every single one of you for following my journey and I have already set my goals for the rest of 2012 and early 2013 but I will fill you in towards the end……can you guess!!!!

Friday night we were all called back to the Taupo Events center to have a weather update. I think we all knew it was coming but didn’t want to believe it. Then the words came out…..We will be unable to let you race tomorrow…..at that point I felt the past year has been a waste of time, I felt emotional, I felt angry, I felt sad, I felt pretty much every emotion one could feel, except for happiness, which is what I was meant to being feeling. I was meant to be excited about what the next day held and what crossing that line would mean to me and the other 1600 athletes that were on that line. I wasn’t meant to feeling as though I was crushed. For a split second I felt like I was back in that dark place where I thought the world was against me.

I looked around the room and could see that every single person in there was feeling the same things I was. So I took some comfort in the fact that I wasn’t alone in the way I was feeling. I was able to put on a brave face. It wasn’t until I saw my mum that it all sunk in and the tears started to flow. It was just an out pouring of emotions. How could it happen….how could something that had been part of my life for so long be taken away from me. It wasn’t the fact that the ironman was cancelled it was what it was meaning to me. It was going to show how far I have come since I was in my dark days. But what I have learnt over the year is that things happen for a reason and I now have the tools to deal with setbacks like this one and am able to move on and not dwell on it.

Yes we were able to complete in a half ironman on Sunday and a massive thank you to the event organizers for putting it on but it still felt hollow crossing the line and there was no way I was putting on the Ironman finishes medal! That would just jinx me for next year!!!!

Yes that’s right…. Next year! Like I said earlier I had set my goals for this year. Thanks to you all I was able to raise over $6,000.00 for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand. I was also able to get my word across to a lot of people and the feedback I have had has been amazing and I am just sorting out a visit to a school to talk to students there about what I went through! This is what this whole journey has been about! And when I think about it like that- this is why I wasn’t meant to do the Ironman last Saturday. I have decided that I want to turn that $6k into $20k in the next year and I think that this is achievable. But also I want to get my story out to as many people as I can.

So I am sorry you are stuck with me!!!!!! My first event will be the Huntly Half marathon and will be looking at other events after that. So please if you see me out and about come up say hi or even join me!

It has been an emotional week but I have come through it and am looking forward to another amazing year, meeting more amazing people and doing it all with a smile on my face.

I hope you are all well.

I will sort out a wee video of the half soon and will post it.

Take care

Craig

So this is a new spot on the website for this next part of the Journey. Claire from Mission Nutrition will be writing fortnightly blogs that will be posted here. They will give a fantastic insight into how to be healthy and lead a healthy lifestyle.

So yeah, I was hopping that today I would be telling you all about how great it feels to cross that Ironman line! But as you may well know it was cancelled due to the poor weather that was in Taupo over the weekend…..well it was called a weather bomb! And seeing guys surfing on the lake pretty much cemented the fact that we couldn’t of done the IM on Saturday!

We were all told on the Friday night. There was a gasp by 1600 athletes……our dreams had just been taken away. I really don’t have words to describe the feeling tat I felt. It was gut wrenching and I finally broke down when I got home and saw my mum. Yes it was going to mean that I was going to be an Ironman but it meant so much more than that to me. It was to signify how far I have come! But it wasn’t to be.

Bring on 2013 IM New Zealand is all I can say.

I am going to keep this short and sweet because I am still feeling flat. I will check in again soon and talk you through the Half we were able to get in on Sunday. And a massive ups to the organisers for running the event on short notice.

Take care

Craig