Nice run, shame about the fall....

Got out this morning for the Harbourside Hike STaR, basically a series of loops around Sydney's lower North Shore taking in North Sydney, Cammeray, St Leonards, Lane Cove, Riverview, Longueville, Northwood and Greenwich, based around the Waverton Bowling Club. This was my first STaR since October 24 (nice to be missed!) and marked two weeks since the Six Foot Track training run, so I was keen to extend the legs a bit and get a feel for how my endurance was going in the context of recovery.

Managed 30.16km in 2h32m58s, with a good strong finish with a fellow named Tony - we broke away from the main group with about three km or so to go, and although feeling it a bit we put in some good pace to the finish. I do like to finish feeling fast, and we managed that today.

Managed my third tumble today, through the bush section at Riverview. Didn't go down fully, managing to hold myself up with my hands. Got a couple of scratches on my legs for my trouble (right knee, right shin about three inches above some scars, which are on top of some older scars, left knee) and cut my right hand up a bit - thumb pad and the webbing between the third finger and pinkie. I caught it and was able to keep going - came up a bit better than Blue Dog, who took a tumble coming out of St Leonards Park in North Sydney. Still, he was coming off the Portland Marathon, so he had a pretty reasonable excuse...

This makes for a 75km week, and 113km for the month. Would be nice to have more, but it's difficult planning for recovery from something you haven't done before. I've got a handle on what to expect after the November 28 venture to Six Foot now, and given the training should recover better anyway.

I got some guidance from Action on how best to run the 3 x 3km session. He commented that the sessions should be done evenly, at a couple of seconds quicker than 10km pace. Hmmmm, so based on a 38 minute 10k, that's 3:48 per km, so aim for 3:46. So that would be 3 repeats at 11:18....ouch....

Focus this week is the half marathon at the Sydney Marathon Clinic on Sunday...