SW Squad - long Sunday

Fronted up to participate in my first serious Sunday long run with the SW quad. Arrived at Centennial Park, the gates nearest Fox Studios, just before 7:30am on a clear, cool morning.

Easy Tiger and brightshoes were already there, so I did two laps of the nearby oval to warm up. The bulk of the squad turned up fairly shortly, and we were away.

The session is basically made up of sections of between 10-20 minutes, where runners can opt to hang back with the back, or surge, depending on how they feel, and then run a small loop at a catch up point whilst the rest of the group catches up. It's a bit different, but I quite like the set up.

I didn't feel great from the onset with a few digestive discomforts through the run. The pace was pretty solid, slipping down to 4:26 per km as we went past an hour. I felt I was battling to hang on here, but after making a bit of a pit stop to alleviate the aforementioned discomfort, joined up with SW and Easy Tiger for a couple of loops of the park we use for Thursday night speed work. Easy Tiger headed off and I had the last 45-50 minutes to myself. I did an outer loop of Centennial Park, and made it a point not to go backwards pacewise. I did feel much better after the stop, though, and actually felt sort of decent, managing to hold on for 29.38km in 2h10, at 4:26 per km pace, ave HR 131,.

Session was all on grass and I can feel the difference already, only an hour and a half after stopping - no impact soreness in the lower legs. Recovery tomorrow should be interesting.

The run was hard work, which I guess is the point.

I've managed to hook the plot into Google Earth, so here's a map of the run!


Ended up with 444km for the month, another record, and third month in a row over 400km. Would have been around 460 but for the missed day on July 11, that said I know I did the right thing missing that run, as the hip is much improved.

Highlight of the month was definitely the Homebush 10k that got me the preferred start.