Lazy Runner does the Solomons

See Lazy Runner on TV....http://www.onetelevision.com.sb/index.php/sport/soccer/11812-runners-arrive-ahead-of-the-guadalcanal-half-marathon
The day finally arrived for 7 excited Lazy Runners and one very nervous Tour guide, for Lazy Runners Tours very first tour.

I'm pleased to say no hiccups leaving Australia and no problems arriving in The Solomon’s, except for the blast of hot air when we alighted the aircraft and a few grumbling of ‘how are we going to run in this heat'

We got through Solomon customs carrying our 10kilos of powder...Gatorade powder that is!.

The doors of the airport opened to a media throng. We  thought someone important was arriving, we quickly learnt the Lazy Runners we the VIPs, after some photo shoots and interviews, we were transfered to the brand new Heritage Park hotel.

Everyone settled in and had a few cool welcoming drinks, then it was off to the Yacht Club for dinner…and yes you still need to sign in.

Highlight of Day 1- Lying on my bed in my PJ's thinking I would turn off the TV for the night when the news said 'sports up next', so I thought I would watch the that first.

The opening story showed electronic doors opening and who should be casually strolling through them in all his glory, on my hotel plasma screen, but Darren Condon, coming up the rear (which is never usually the case) was Cath, with the voice over saying ‘Queensland athletes arrive in Honiara for half marathon’.

Madonna and I sat bolt upright, we couldn’t believe our eyes. The story went on for another five minutes with pictures of all the Lazy Runners and then some horrible close ups of the coach and tour guide, explaining who we were and the purpose of our visit.

Not only were Lazy Runners the first news story in sport but the knocked out the Frank Farina sacking, he came in at story three. I did try to ring Darren’s room to tell him of his brush with fame, but poor darling was asleep already, apparently the jetlag from the three hour flight was just too much for this Queensland athlete!

Day 2- The serious part of the tour started at 6am this morning, with 6 lazy Runners and their coach setting out to check out the weather and the course. We thought 10km would do the trick, by one km the whinging had started, but 2 km I was trying to avoid the murderous looks and well let’s just say it was one of the most unpleasant 10km I’ve ever run.

Ok... back to the hotel to debrief and rethink our race plan...to all the Lazy Runners who complained about the heat in Brisbane on my Lazy Runner Fun Run, you don’t know what you are going on about!

After a dip in the pool and a huge breakie everyone was starting to feel a bit better. It was then decided we should take a nice leisurely tour in the afternoon.

We were advised to go on the Waterfall tour, a leisurely walk and then maybe a picnic and then come back along the river in tubes. Just what we needed a bit of R and R. I guess if I was quick enough on the uptake I would have asked why we need 8 tour guides and only 2 tubes for the 8 or us, but I thought these guys know what they are doing.

The leisurely tour, ended up being a 5 hour kokoda style trek through jungle, mud, rapids and rock climbs, you name it we encountered it.

At one  stage I was wading through, neck high murky water wondering if every log was a crocodile and feeling things creeping all over me and wondering if it was too late to take the Malaria medication.

The first hour was quite nice and scenic and yes a bit of rain did set in, but when we came to the top of a mountain and the guides tied a rope to a tree and threw it down and then told us to hang onto the rope and try to get to the bottom, I started to get some funny looks from the runners.

It was at that point that we stepped into another dimension, something akin to a Rambo movie. But what could we do we had to surge forward.

A bladder testing experience occurred for me, when I was stuck halfway down the mud hill hanging on to two Tarzan like vines and my legs just slipping all over the place in the mud, waiting for Darren who was in front of me to go first as I didn’t want to crash into him.

 
He started edging his way down in the mud and was looking pretty good, in his new white Nike Polo and white shorts, but Oh, a tiny slip in the mud sent him  flying, straight down on his back and if that wasn’t enough he actually did a mud roll and ended up on his stomach slipping further down, all I could see was his horrified face and his eyes pleading with me to help, and I just held on to my vines and tried to hold my knees together and I don’t think I have laughed so much in all my life. I looked to the side and saw one of the guides was trying to contain his amusement and I thought look at our Queensland athletes now, my how the mighty have fallen.

That one mud hill took  an hour to get down, but at least that the bottom we were at the magnificent waterfalls and we could get in rinse off and have a laugh the enjoy this lovely cruising back along the river.

Once again I should of spotted the warning signs, like the native tour leader yelling at the other guides in his own lingo and them all looking the water with very worried expressions on their faces, but oh no I trusted their expertise.

The tube ride down the river ended up being a two hour wild rapids of underwater rocks that ripped our legs to shreds; at times a huge undertow that threatened to drag us under and it just went on and on and on.

This was my first tour and my first time working under the title ‘Tour Guide’ and it didn’t take long for me to find I was so out of my league. I tried to stay up front with our lead tour guide, a big native Rastafarian man with a lovely gently soothing voice (which came in very handy when we were starting to get very scared).

The rapids were deceiving and he had warned me that when I get to the log up the river to be careful as it was quite strong in that area, he told me to get to the log and hang on. Get to the log!! I smashed into the log and with the force of the water and was stuck like a magnet and then it just dragged me under so fast the my foot got stuck under a rock, he was trying to pull me out, I kept going back under, I couldn’t tell him I was stuck and he just kept reefing me up, I looked at his face and I could see that he was worried and it was then that I thought 'I’m going to die on my first tour!!'. I managed to convey to him that I was stuck and he got my foot out and then he lifted me up onto the log.

There we were on this log with the rapids all round us, he was standing on the log like Tarzan and there I was sitting with my arms wrapped around his legs like a tearful toddler, shivering and sniffling and thinking my God I’m not a tour guides bootstrap.  I then opened my eyes and looked upstream and I saw all the Lazy Runners coming hurtling down on the rapids towards the log with horrified looks on their faces and I just shut my eyes and hung onto his leg tighter!

We got out…but not before there were tears, pain, despair and fear, but more than any of that laughter as you have never heard, it was one of the toughest yet funniest things I have every done. It was amazing that no one suffered any major injuries, we did lose a few things along the way... money, a camera died, contact lenses, dignity, bladder control..but all in all we did quite well to pull through with all body parts intact.

When I got back to the hotel I was telling Peter the tour and event organiser what we went through he said “Gosh Marie you should be thrilled, people pay a fortune for that sort of mental challenge and team building excursions”.  I then had a brain wave , on the debrief of the tour at drinks afterwards, I told 7 exhausted runners that it was me deliberately challenging them mentally so that come Sunday a half marathon in 100 percent humidity would be  a walk in the park…somehow I don’t think they believed that line of bull#***

Highlight of Day 2- For the first half of today's epic tour, Darren was the mild mannered tourist in his neat white polo, long shorts and shoes, once he was humiliated on the mudslide hill, he ripped off the outer gear to reveal his Speedos and a rash vest, and he went from Clarke Kent to Superman. The break out of the Speedos saw him ride the rapids, help all the girls,  coordinate the rescue operation and still crack jokes in between, it impressed the natives so much that one of them asked it he was “ex military”

Day 3- Saw me at 5.30am hobbling to the foyer to wait for the Lazy Runners to attempt another 10km to try to get used to the humidity, not surprisingly not all runners turned up, but Gaye did so off we went together for 10km, which was a lot better than the day before, even though every muscle in my body was screaming after the Kokoda style debacle of the day before.

Breakfast saw us once again debriefing the tour the previous day, and of course it didn’t take long for the subject of Darren’s Speedos to come up…we told Darren how amazed we were to see how his personality changed when he busted out the Speedos. We suggested he may like to try them out in the half marathon, God knows what he could achieve…once again we ended up in fits of laughter and it didn’t take us long to figure out which muscles worked the most on the tour of the day before, we were all holding our stomachs, who said you need to do sit ups to get a six pack…laughter really is the best stomach exercise.

Today’s tour was a snorkelling one just off the Solomon’s Shores, we were told we had an Aussie diver and it wouldn’t be as tough as the waterfall tour. We met Geoff he gave us a debrief and he took us to his van, it was a hot and dusty vehicle and we all piled in, one minute up the road, our hero of yesterday starting yelling out and wanting the bus to stop, we of course thought he was joking but when we saw the colour of his face we realised he was serious so the bus stopped. Steve got kicked out of the front seat and Darren climbed in and looked back at us with  cheeky grin…He claimed later that he had a panic attack, I prefer to call it a Hissy fit, but the little tantie got him into the front seat so  it worked.

However, after that things didn’t go well, the water was too rough to even attempt to snorkel, the tour guide should of told us it wasn’t suitable but of course he wanted our money, so after a lot of driving around and looking at very choppy water he took us back and then refused to refund our money, claiming we did snorkel. I hardly think standing with flippers in a very rough sea is snorkelling, however, after a little haggling with the tour company; we did get a little refund.

With nothing else to do we decided to go on a pub crawl around Honiara. That was all done by 9pm, so back to the hotel for another early night

Day 4- This is our official rest day. I invited Lazy Runners to join me on a final run of the course at 6am, sitting there in the foyer on my own waiting, it didn’t take long for Gaye to wander out, so off we went again this time an 8km.  We didn’t know if the weather was getting cooler or we are just getting used to the heat, but once again it felt a lot better than the first day we went out.

We registered for the race, which was easy for us as that happened in our hotel foyer. We got our bright canary yellow race shirts and checked out the competition!

This Lazy Runner spent the day at the hotel, but some went shopping , some just swam and sunbathed and some slept.

Our carb loading dinner was across the road at the King Solomon Hotel, a very traditional island hotel with grass roofs and island artefacts. We received plenty of carbs, and we all behaved ourselves and stayed on the water all evening.

The Highlight of Day 4- Traditional Island dancing by the local men and women after our carb loading dinner. The Islanders are beautiful and happy people. it didn’t take long for Darren who as we are finding out likes a little attention to be invited on stage to dance with the islander girls. He and Gaye were up there shimmying their hips while we all clapped and cheered. At one stage Daren was surrounded by 5 beautiful island girls, he later revealed that he didn’t like that as they were cramping his style and no one in the audience could see him!

Day 5- Race day
What a great way to start a race. The race start was 6.30am, we sauntered out of our hotel rooms at 6am, applied bucket loads of Paw Paw cream to every crevice on our bodies and we were still standing at the start line at 6.15. I wish all races started out the front of the hotel you were staying in!
There were about 350 runners in the Half Marathon, half of those locals and the other half international runners or ex pats.
The weather was beautiful, but not the sort of weather you want when you are running a Half Marathon. It was very warm and sunny, and after only a couple of kms in you knew you knew that it was going to be very tough dealing with the heat..and it was tough..but on the upside it was very well done.

At every one kilometre they had a drink station with a cold bottles of water, all you had to do was grab one have  drink, douse yourself down and know that it was only one kilometre until you could grab another one. The roads were flat and half the time shaded, it was pretty hard running in the sunny bits so we were always searching for little bit so shade along the way. The locals volunteered to man the drink stations..and they were lovely, happy people who were very supportive, so that helped. The police and army were also on the course looking after us, and we all felt very safe.

It was amazing to see the local men running barefoot..and running fast. I was running with a Kiwi, who was stationed in the Solomons, he told me that the locals think wearing shoes and sweating is a sign of weakness!


The finish line took a long time coming, but the joy of seeing the Solbrew sign about one km out was very sweet. We all finished! Poor Narelle suffered from a bout of heat exhaustion once she crosssed the finish line, but everyone was very helpful and she was Ok after 5mins.

We were offered Sol brew the local beer, after the race, and even I, not a usual beer drinker, found it went down very well!

Once we were all back, it was great to walk straight into our hotel and jump in the pool, running gear and all!
We had a couple of hours to rest and recharge, before we had to be back at the King Solomon Hotel for a post race lunch and presentations. The presentations were great and in places quite moving. The locals recieved most of the prizes and it was great to see them so excited.

The wound down with a few more drinks, dinner at the hotel and very early night

Highlight of Day 5- All Lazy Runners finished a very hot half marathon in the Solomon Islands..with no injuries, and they were still smiling!