Easter Weekend catch-up

Saturday

2:30pm 7km race at Sir Joseph Banks Park in Botany with the RBH. Always a bit awkward, this mid-afternoon races, in terms of eating and working out what time I should leave to get over there, although the combination of quiet roads and the half toll for the Cross City tunnel made it pretty easy.

I didn't have an overly clear idea of what I was hoping to acheive at this event, thinking pretty much at the start that 25:12 (3:36 pace) would be nice.

Very small field headed west from Fremlin Street through Sir Joseph Banks Park, along the bike track. I headed out initially with Easy Tiger and Mohammed, Mohammed gradually dropping off after 1k or so. After emerging from the park and running through around a kilometre of industrial area, hit the turnaround at 12:36, pretty well bang on target. Easy Tiger and I were joined by Don Juan just after half way.

From there, Don Juan, Easy Tiger and I battled it out. Easy Tiger fell off about 500 metres after we re-entered the park, and DJ and I continued to battle until around 1.5km to go, where my troublesome stomach hinted it might play up, and I simply couldn't hold the pace, Don Juan hitting home in 25:27 in 5th, and me following home in six for 25:40, 3:40 pace, just beating a fast finishing East Tiger who managed 25:42.

Could have been faster, but I guess I'm just not there yet. Still, good hit out. I think these shorter XC events are great for your speed, as they're short enough that you have to get out and just flog it, but long enough for it to hurt. You'll always do a race harder than a training session!

Sunday

The race seemed to take a bit out of me and I simply couldn't get out of bed to do my long run in the morning. We had plans to head up to the Blue Mountains later that morning, so I had to run in the late afternoon (a rut I seem to be stuck in at the moment!).

We didn't end up getting back until around 5:30, so it was going to be a late one!

Got out the door at about 5:50pm or so and headed east. Ran from Gladesville to the Bay Run, did a 9k Dog Run loop, then back to the start of the 5k challenge course and followed that to the Lilyfield Road bridge, crossed over, looped around back under the bridge and ran through the unleashed dog area (much nicer in the dark with no dogs!) , hooked into the back of the 5k challenge course and followed that back to the Rowers, back up on to Victoria Road and back home. Worked very hard on maintaining pace, covering 28.90km in 2:07:08. Felt pretty strong through the run, actually, just working to maintain momentum.

Pretty lonely out there - thank goodness for the iPod. Two hours circulating the Bay Run in the dark with no-one around would have driven me mad(der).