The weekend

Catch up of activities this weekend.

Saturday

NSW Road Racing Champs at Holsworthy. Course is two loops of a 4.8k loop (or so), with around a 400 metre overlap from the start and finish. The course has some deceptive rises and falls in it, starting with a solid 1km drag uphill, a basically flat 2k or so, then a 1.5km drag back up the hill past the entrance to the finishing area, basically a 500 metre flattish stretch. Conditions were fairly warm, and quite smokey with some burning off in the area.


I made a call to run the event purely on feel and ran without a watch. Gun went and the big field gradually sorted itself out over the first kilometre. I eased past Mohammed and ran with Jenny T and Don Juan through the first four kilometres, picking up and pulling away from Sparkie from around 3 through to 4km. DJ and Jenny eased away from me up the hill back to the start area, but I was comfortable with that, deciding the downhill around the back of the loop would be a smarter place to get back on board. I was about 10s down on DJ through 5.4km.

Worked on keeping the gap consistent. Came across Phil S at about 7km who was a bit chatty, and I must confess it broke my concentration a bit - DJ had eased out another 20 metres or so while I was distracted. I was pushing pretty hard through the last of the downhill, and once the climb back to the finish started, the wheels fell off. It was a very ugly climb to the end, and I lost a couple of places through the last 1.5km.

Time was 37:27, which is a bit more like it. Some redemption for last week's disaster.

Two little niggles:
- it took forever to get my details taken down after finishing, well over 5 minutes. Some guys who ran 41 minutes+ got their details taken down before I did. This stuff of taking the finisher details in lots of 10 (i.e. 1 to 10, 11 to 20 and so on) just doesn't seem to work. I got burned on this last week as well, and after finishing yesterday cramped up in my left hamstring whilst standing in line. Still feeling it today - nothing serious, but surely it's asking a bit much of 10k runners to hang around for 6 minutes waiting to get their details
- the delay in presentation of results for the 10k, particularly the team results, is pretty ordinary. It took forever at Nowra, and it took forever yesterday. How can you not have the team results 2 hours after the finish of the event? After the brutual efficiency of the registration and results processes at the track events of Homebush, it astounds me that no-one at Aths NSW can find a laptop with registered athlete details and do a simple sort in Excel.

Oh well, feel like I'm back on track. To put things into perspective, I ran 38:40 this time last year on a perfect morning at North Head (which I would probably rate faster than Holsworthy) and was rapt with it, rather than grumbling about a 37:27 in warm conditions. Times change.

Sunday

Slept in again. I had some hopes of making the squad run at Centennial Park, but I'm just not willing to compromise on the sleep front at the moment, and an inital walk around revealed quite tight hammies, particularly the aforementioned left one, and it was my preference to get some walking on them to at least get some blood through them before attempting to run on them.

We were slated to go to lunch with friends at 1pm, but had to duck out and do a quick shop. We were back at about 10:45, so I decided to slip out and run for at least 90 minutes (program said 2 hours, which just didn't seem feasible, plus I was concerned about my hammies) rather than take my chances of getting out late in the day. Ran from home, quick loop through Huntley's Point, up Victoria Road to the Bay Run, out and back along the CR 5k Challenge course, and then home. I took about 1km out of the run home - I was getting a bit tight for time and the westerly almost brought me to a standstill climbing the Gladesville Bridge and again through Huntley's Point, with protesting hammies.

So, probably 21km or so in a bit over 97 and a half minutes. Felt okay, apart from the last section into the teeth of a quite warm and strong westerly wind.

Of course, on getting home I find the lunch date had been cancelled. Oh well, afternoon's free, I guess.