Meet the Mentor - lollipop versus kili diary #3

Here it is Michael - your Offaly debut!!

Meet the Mentor!
Maybe it’s because he’s on annual leave and I miss him in work (but I seriously doubt it) or maybe it’s because I promised I’d give him his newspaper debut in this column, but this week I’m going to introduce you to my Kilimanjaro mentor Michael!
Michael is a colleague of mine; we both work in a Dublin office where the only climbing necessary is up an excuse for a flight of stairs. I met him in late 2008, and because he was almost as new to the company as I was we were both lumped with working over Christmas. During that week we watched a few movies (fingers crossed my boss hasn’t taken up my invitation to keep up with this column on my blog – suffice to say my job is not to watch movies), ate a few chocolates and found out we both liked to travel.
A few days and New Year resolutions later we had both decided we were beginning 2009 on a month-long healthy note. He gave up smoking, drinking and eating rubbish and took up the gym. I’d never taken up smoking in the first place so I decided I could skip the gym bit once I chucked in some walking. My housemate Gillian joined in with me and we went through January complaining daily, patting ourselves on the back for our efforts at least twice daily and getting our housemate Martin to tell us how good we were for not eating chocolate or drinking every evening in front of the telly. Actually we didn’t even make it all the way through January. We decided about two thirds through it would be disrespectful not to celebrate Australia Day, so January 26 saw us in The Woolshed on Parnell Street drinking VB, warbling “Waltzing Matilda” and talking to Chads, Brads and Lances.
Michael went about his month a little differently. He graduated on January 31 with flying colours…and not only continued into February with the healthy thing but bumped it up by signing up to climb Kilimanjaro in September.
Cutting a long (and boring – getting fit doesn’t make for the most interesting yarn ever) story short, he basically got super fit, successfully climbed Kili and loved it.
And I swear not two months later my friend Emma Jane independently suggested we do the same.
So, partly because I’m in awe of Michael (I like to set my standards low when it comes to choosing heroes, being in awe of people etc), but mostly because I think anything he can do I can do better, I agreed. Not exactly with gusto, but I agreed.
Since then Michael has somehow become my motivator/fitness guru/personal Hitler (depending how I’m feeling on the day). We got off to a bit of a rocky start when he wrote out a January fitness plan that included a potato ban and adding minutes onto running times before I had either gotten my breath back or congratulated myself enough on my jogging brilliance, but since he’s realised (ok, I told him) that I respond best to praise we’re getting along famously!
We hit the Wicklow hills for a four hour hike a few weeks ago to ease me into the idea of slopes, and more importantly he’s helped me get from being able to run two laps of the square next to my house (which takes all of four minutes) to being able to run a 10km road race and still feel I could do more. (Now this is starting to feel like an Oscar acceptance speech!)
I’m leaving the final few words to Michael. He’s asked as a special request to be known as Sensei Michael, and I’ve agreed to it for a week if he comes up with cheesy pseudo-sage phrases I can tack onto the end of this column for a laugh.
“Getting to the top is only halfway.”
Indeed…

Until next week,

Lollipop

P.S. I know I said last week this column would have details of my first fundraiser. Put June 11 in your diary and I’ll tell all next week!


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