The Blue Dog, Katie, Ray and Bernie G Roadtrip

Saturday, 17 June 2006

Katie and Ray arrived at our place nice and early for a day of adventure, the Nowra Cross Country. It was a perfect day and the scenary was beautiful. We stopped a Berry for a quick comfort stop and to grap a couple of drinks, when I spotted a van selling donuts, which I announced to Blue Dog, who quickly turns into a Simpson character with donuts. As we got close to the venue, we joked about a couple of hills in the horizon, thankfully we were wrong.

We got there nice and early so we marked out a sunny area for the official "Striders" tent ;-). Thankfully, we did arrive early as a few of the team missed the national anthem. It was great fun watching the kids races, they would take off for a 2k race at the pace you would start a 100m dash.
Katie and I eventually went for a warm up, and thankfully ran most of the course, so we got an idea of what was ahead of and twice. We joked that we would miss the start of the boys race, thankfully we didn't. As everybody took off Katie and were both close the back of the pack and went through the first kilometre in 4.39minutes, shit way too fast. I eventually got into a comfortable rhythm, my goal was to run the complete course and not walk, which was achieved. As were running the guys kept popping up all over the place offering words of encouragement. I finished in 44:03, which I was very pleased with, given the difference between myself and the other girls, and I had anticipated a 45 to 46 minute finish. Katie, Amanda, Naomi and I then went for a cool down and cheered the boys home. When we had all finished our races and cool downs, we ate the samplings of great food supplied by Elise, Katie, Amanda and myself.

It soon got very cold so we quickly departed. Unfortunately, the trip home was a little slow due to weight of the bling Blue Dog won in the 45+ Team, and yes it was GOLD. We finished off the day with some great Pizza.

Sunday, 18 June 2006

Blue Dog and I got up nice and early and ran the STaR. I ran with Katie and Naomi, who we were ahead of me most of the way, and we were joined by Damien and Blue Dog for the first 16ks. It was a beautiful morning, and the views were spectacular along the coast. Us girls took a short cut as we only wanted to run 20ks today. We got back to the finish and found we were 500 metres short, so we ran around the park and until we got to that magic number, and no we do not have compulsive disorders.

Another great weekend.