The Dee Why STaR

... and so to Sunday morning, for the Dee Why STaR. After a difficult night's sleep, arose at 4:30 to get some food, some very strong coffee and to tape my feet up. Nice little error here - couldn't find my Kayanos, so took my slow Adidas Supernovas out - without any inner soles. Oops. Odd thing is, apart from a bit of seam on the inside of the right foot, I didn't notice until the finish, when I took them off, and thought "mmm, why can I see stitches?". Oh well.

It was revoltingly humid as I walked out the door and picked up Johnny Dark, and then Tesso who was down from Brisbane. We made our way north, and impressively I got there without referring to the map or getting lost. I let them go while I found a park, and once the Sube was put away I made my way to the Surf Club. There was a huge crowd here (Action estimated 120), and a frankly intimidatingly large group headed away in the 6am group.

Had a pretty solid run, although I certainly wilted over the last 7 or 8k (and I'm not Robinson Crusoe on this front). I was pretty pleased with my climbs - the Dee Why STaR is rated as a H4 - it gets better, next week's run at Berowra (scene of a recent disgrace) is rated as a H5, the week after the first 10k of the season at Lane Cove. There's a quite sustained ascent along Oxford Falls Road (according to the Garmin, around 130 metres over 2.85k) from the 9.2k point, and a nasty little 34m climb over 500 metres at 28.2km (who would put that in a course?!?). After some advice from Mister G, I've been trying to recruit my glutes and hamstrings when tackling these climbs, and it seems to work, although I've no doubt I look a bit like a duck waddling. I was running with Blue Dog approaching the last hill, and wasn't feeling fantastic. Once the hill we had to climb was apparent, I starting whinging, to which Blue Dog replied that he was wary of me when I started complaining, and that he loved hills. I, of course, left him behind on the hill. He got me again on the downhill, though.

Net result of the morning - 29.6km in 2:37:35, including stops. Pretty pleased with that effort, and of the whole weekend. Feet remain a bit of a concern, but are livable, and seem to be healing (although I have a fresh blister on my right arch).

Finished the morning off with a swim at Dee Why, including catching a pearler of wave whilst bodysurfing. I gave it away after that - I wasn't going to get another wave of that quality. Water was sensational after the run, really helped bring the body temperature down.

The weekend has proven somewhat of a catalyst. I made the comment to a few people that I was starting to get in a bit of a rut mentally, and I was probably pretty physically run down as well. It's the old story in running - if you don't take the week off when the body tells you too, it'll make you take it off, by illness or injury. I feel quite refreshed now - the little 4k at Centennial Park seems to have provided a bit of a mental turnaround, and I'm sure the positive attitude I carried from this event helped with my PB on Saturday, and my enjoying the run so much this morning.

This upcoming week - plans at this point are a recover 5 or 10 tomorrow, depending on how I feel, cycling to and from work, Lilyfield Road reps on Tuesday (running there from Drummoyne Rowers), probably the short 10k route to work, and then home on Wednesday, 1k repeats on Thursday, something very easy on Friday so I'm fresh for the opening Striders 10k at Lane Cove on Saturday, and then the Berowra STaR on Sunday. Pretty important STaR for Six Foot competitors, this one.