The winter road racing season begins....in February....in a national park....

Getting in the car at 5:50am to dull conditions, very light drizzle and 23 degrees would tend to suggest conditions are somewhat humid (at 6:00am, 76% at Homebush, 98% at Terry Hills, 86% at Sydney). And so they were.

The warm up revealed the legs were about the best they'd been all week, but I was still pretty stiff in the hips and upper legs. Felt a bit better after a warm up and some strides, but suspected it might be an issue heading up to Lane Cove Road.

A big field assembled and we were away. It was pretty jostly through the first kilometre, and I went through in about 3:42 or so. Problem was, I didn't think I could go much harder in the context of a hilly 10k race.

Scribbly's was okay, but the km markers were showing me rapidly losing ground to 3:40 per km pace. I was at about 19:12 through 5, about 30-50 seconds slower than I really needed to be if I was serious about sub 37. On the plus side, the legs felt pretty solid on the downhills, so I thought if I flogged the downhills it would be a good opportunity to break out of the 3:44 pace mould I seemed to be stuck in.

Smashed on the way down, and felt pretty decent. As the hills eased off after Porter's Bridge, I had Jenny Truscott with me. Looking up the road, I could see the lead female Strider, accompanied by Mohammed. They had a lead of maybe 30-40 metres, and I knew we were catching them. I gave some encouragement to Jenny, suggesting that working together we could get her up on to the lead female, and I could latch on to Mohammed. We pushed pretty hard but the hill at the 8km or so (just past Scribbly's on the return) saw her fade, and I was left to my own devices.

I was still catching him, but not quickly enough to be able to get on to him before the finish. I decided to belt out the last 2k or so for personal pride, and the chase pretty well fell out my thinking as we hit the last kilometre.

Going through the gate, I looked up ahead and saw something odd - Uncle Dave was in the process of getting caught by the group in front. I sniffed blood and thought "oh, we might give him a hurry up" and then realised that Mohammed might actually be reachable. This sparked further interest, although it still looked fairly hopeless.

I didn't think it looked possible until we hit the weir. Mohammed had visibly backed off (he later said he'd had a look for me in the last couple of hundred metres and hadn't seen me, so he relaxed) and I got a further boost from the downhill on to the weir. It was enough to give me the speed I needed, and the speed difference was enough to ensure that if Mohammed had seen me he wouldn't have had time to get up to speed to hold me off. The margin ended up 2 seconds, with me passing him in the last 5-10 metres.

Good fun. A bit slower than I was really hoping for, but it's 45 seconds faster than last year, and I had a disrupted lead-up . Good strong finish, too, so plenty positives to take away - humid, too. I'm confident I can find plenty of time at Homebush next month.