Weekend Adventures

Saturday, 14 October 2006

Another earlier start to the day, we arrived at Fitzroy Falls welcomed by the heat and the usual crowd of runners. After getting ourselves organised I gave Blue Dog a kiss for good luck and watched the marathon runners run off in the wilderness. I then went and lined up to use the toilet, which is an unsolved mystery. Why do people take so long? After assuring Katie and Deanne that the course was really good and only one slight hill, after our warm-up on the course we discovered that my memory of the course was vague. My 10k race was a shocker. I have not even bothered to look at my splits. I am even embarrassed to say, but for my crap run I picked up 3rd in my age group. When I heard my name being called during the 10k presentation, I actually thought I had won a lucky door prize.

Spent the afternoon cheering the marathon runners home and then enjoyed a nice picnic thanks to Katie and Deanne.

Sunday, 15 October 2006

I finally made it out to SMC. I had a 2hr run on my program at 6:00min/km pace, so my goal was run the half marathon in 2hrs. I just took off nice and easy and just concentrated on my own run, not wanting to get caught up in racing. So I just cruised around the course on my own and had a great time, I had a number of people offer words of encouragement, but I didn’t want to let them know it was only a training run. In the back half of the run I found I felt really strong on the hills and managed overtake a few runners. I just concentrated on my form, keeping relaxed and not racing. I finished in 1hr 55mins flat; my average pace was 5:27/hr so I was really happy to put in a good solid training run. We hung around for a while then went to my parents place.

After doing all the housework at my parents place, I say down and had a chat to my Dad. He asked my how far I had run, and I replied, “I’ve done a half marathon today”. He was surprised and asked about my running times; hopefully one day Striders may have a new member.