The Final Touches

16 February

I woke up to find it was still a little dark and used that as an excuse to sleep in and run in the afternoon. After a busy day and work and family dinner scheduled, I squeezed in a quick 5kms. Nothing too exciting just keep the legs turned over. When Blue Dog and I moved to our current dwellings, I used to think my 5km route was "hilly", now it all seems flat. Perhaps it's the coach's hill running technique; and Tesso I cannot give away too many secrets.

17 February

Another early rise and over to the Bay to meet Katie, Razor and Deanne for a nice leisurely run. We included the Dog Leg, Marion Street and a trip up "Shores" for good measure. Just a nice comfortable running, chatting about all things running and the topic of 6 Foot did get raised a couple of times. Ran a total of 12km with an average pace of 5:41/km. It sure felt comfortable, but I could not believe the amount of sweat that was dripping of me. We finished the morning with a nice breakfast.

For a little further inspiration, I went to the Testra A Athletics at Homebush. There were some great athletes out there.

18 February

I ran the long run at SMC today, 25km as a training run. I had the company of Tim (aka CR Redback) which was great. Although I was a little worried that I was going to slow him down, we kept together at good LSD pace and just enjoyed the run and chatted away. I was very good and remembered to drink regularly; water and Gatorade and made sure I had my gels, which is something I tend to forget about. Four ks out from the finish Katie and Razor meet us and ran to the finish with us as their cool down. I finished in 2:26:10 which was pretty good.

With all the long runs out of the way, it now time to cut back on the distance and freshen up and concentrate on my race plan.