Becoming a winner – part 6

Minnie

 A lot of our current squad members know Minnie as a cheeky/funny girl who loves her training and always has a joke to share. Most don’t know Minnie’s story.

When she was a little girl she walked in calipers until she was five years old to straighten her legs (like Forrest Gump)

I met her when I started coaching her boyfriend. He asked me to write her a program. I hesitated at the time. They had moved up from Sydney and the group Minnie had done some running with had her injured often, and to be honest, I thought she wouldn’t handle the training. She looked too frail.

He persisted, so eventually I wrote her one, concentrating on her swimming and cycling with just enough running to hold some sort of run technique.

She was an enthusiastic trainer, always there, keen to do whatever she had to do. Over a couple of months she proved to be tougher than her boyfriend, he was a bit of a skirt when things were tough. She had the sort of attitude where, nothing would stop her. The harder the workout, the tougher the conditions, the harder she became.

The squad was training for the Australian Ironman in Forster 96. Minnie asked if I thought she could do it. I really didn’t want to injure her. I agreed to train her for it but told her we would be aiming at building most of her fitness in the swim and bike while using just enough running “to get by”.

Race day arrived, the squad did well. It seems that the further Minnie went, the stronger she became mentally. The squad had the fastest bike in five categories and second fastest in four others. We had eleven Hawaii qualifyiers.

Minnie won the 18-24 cat by 55min.

She qualified for Hawaii 96, while we trained running on forest trails she had an accident. She twisted her ankle and broke it, 12 weeks out from Hawaii. We had to carry her out of the forest.

She was devastated, her dream shattered.

She had one week off training. When the swelling went down the doctors fitted a fibreglass cast to her leg so she could still swim and water run.

When the squad trained long on Sunday’s, I would prepare a script for Minnie, setting out length of climbs, heart rates, frequency of climbs etc. She rode with a velcro strap holding her cast to her cycle shoe. She did up to six hour sessions on the trainer and up to two hour water run sessions.

Five weeks out from Hawaii, the doctors removed her cast, she had to learn to walk, jog and then run on it. We kept her to the grass and kept up the water running. Before leaving for Hawaii, I had her run a 1hr road run, next week a 90min run, then a two hour run on the road. That’s three runs in the 12 week lead up to the Hawaii Ironman.

She raced Hawaii96. We had a mental preparation strategy worked out where, she would reward herself for everyone she passed in the run. It was always going to be a run. We had visualised the whole thing unfolding over and over. Always running, continually passing people, passing one at a time was good. But when she passed two walking together she gave herself a little reward affirmation.

Minnie finished in the top five in her category (in Hawaii they recognise top five in every category) she had the second fastest run in her category. With three runs on the road in the past 12 weeks.

Next year she raced Forster 97 in the next cat. 25-29, she won that as well and raced Hawaii again in 97.

Minnie had achieved much more than she ever imagined possible. She had split from the boyfriend (who even though he was big and strong, was as soft as butter) she moved back to Sydney and after some time away from sport took up running again.

Quite a few marathons later she found herself drawn back to Queensland where she entered a 100km running race, it was the Australian 100km championship. She won by hours. She raced the Aust. 100km champs in 2003, 2004 and 2005, she was unbeaten for three years and set a fastest time of 10hrs and 16sec.

Her body was not really designed for ultra running, personally I don’t think any bodies are. After a few lengthy injuries Minnie decided to get back into a sport which balances the load over the whole body so she came back to the Cycos.

Welcome back Minnie, I’m  proud to have one of the toughest people I have ever met back in the squad.