3 down, one to go.

Good news on the tiger angel front. Two (count 'em, two) days in a row with her body feeling OK (constant headaches, but you can't have everything!). TA's just about dancing around, she's so happy about feeling good. There's still a long road ahead, but maybe, just maybe, she's got to the turnaround...

______________________

I had a pretty lazy week, followed by a pretty energetic weekend. To steal Go Girl's description, the Doona Demon had me trapped on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, so my first run for the week was RunClub on Thursday evening. We did a track session, which always cheers me up (1x800, 2x400, 2x200 with 200 float, 5 min of random fartlek & 1x800). The times from that were nothing special, but somewhere I got the idea that the CR5k on Saturday just might throw up something good.


Only Papa Luigi and I were going off on 21 minutes, and he tucked in behind fairly quickly, so I was on my own for pacing. I'd decided to try for something in the order of 4:05 (20:25 overall) so when I hit 1k at 4:04, I was happy. By the 3rd k, I was breathing like it was my last (km, that is, not breath :-)), but at the same time I knew that I was ahead of the pb. As I hit the 4th k, I could hear Papa's footsteps looming behind me. I tried to pick it up, but I really didn't make much impact. We passed Uncle Dave (pacing Sista Christa) at about 4.5k and he called out "come on dad, you can catch him!". Papa's beaten me so many times over the last 6 months and he has such a strong finish that I didn't need any more incentive. I poured everything I had into it, bringing in a 17 second pb at 20:19 (and a pb for Papa of 20:25 too! :-)).

I think that I made about 4 more steps after the line, collapsed face down on the grass for a few minutes of remedial breathing, and finally rolled over to declare to anyone who was listening that that was my last ever attempt at a pb over that distance. Never again. Never. D'ya hear? Geez that hurt....

However, that result means that I have pb'd in 3 of my 4 distances since the marathon (not including the marathon itself, of course). I now have new pb's in 3k (11:48, though the distance there is a little suspect), 5k (20:19) and 10k (43:35). The only one missing is the half. Maybe I should have run it... Nah!

Particularly pleasing was the evenness of the splits - 4:04, 4:05, 4:08, 4:04 & 3:58. That little race also ticked over the 1000k for my 'new' pair of shoes (I guess I'd better give them a different name now :-) ).

______________________

Micro's footy game was on Saturday night (to the best of my knowledge, the first time that Junior AFL footy has been played under lights in Sydney) at Macquarie Uni (their senior club).
I had volunteered for Boundary Umpire duties again, but this time I didn't wimp out - I wore the garmin. We have a system ideal for unfit parents; we have 2 boundary umps on each side, so you only have to patrol half the distance, and hence do about a quarter of the running. Even still, I racked up almost 8k during the evening. This is the speed graph. You can see that the 1st and 3rd quarters were somewhat more busy - the game was a little one sided...

______________________

This morning was the first Sunday that TA and I have had together with no particular obligations for many a long month, so there was no way that I was getting up early to run this morning (I was also feeling a bit knocked around by the previous evening's sprints, but that was beside the point). We lazed in bed till about 8:30, went to church together (sadly, so rare) and then had friends over for an impromptu lunch. Lovely day!

About 4pm after our guests had gone, I got a call from a mate wanting help on a problem with his house, so I pulled the running gear on, popped over and fixed it, and continued on for a gentle 12k at 5:30 pace. It would have been 13k, but TA chanced past in the car and stopped to see if I wanted a lift, and who am I to knock back a lift when a gorgeous girl offers... :-)

Gnome

Strangely nothing :-(

I put off writing about the Herald half till tonight to give me a bit more time to process my feelings, and I've come to the conclusion that my feelings about the race are just nothing. It's the weirdest thing. I've never done a race that was not associated with an emotion in some way - either the joy of a pb, the satisfaction of a good run or the agony of blowing it. Every time I've paced someone, I've got to experience the emotion vicariously. Either way, it's there.

This time, nothing. The day didn't start too well. Of the seven gents in the group, only two turned up. We explained to them that we would be running at an even pace the whole way; they were free to run ahead if they wished and we'd pick them back up when they tired (though of course, that kind of ruins the idea of a pacer); if they dropped behind, we'd try to help them along, but eventually we'd have to keep going at the set pace. Both had done the run previously in roughly that kind of time.

Both set off too fast (amazing!) and we had to keep dragging them back. I think they got a surprise when we hit the 1k marker exactly on time, because they settled down into our pace after that. Mr #1 runner blew up the first time up Hunter St. I stayed back with him and tried to slowly bring him up to Horrie, but by the time we were half way down to Mrs Macquarie's Chair, he was falling further behind and was clearly not going to make the distance at that rate. Reluctantly, I bade my farewells - I think that he was very happy to be able to slow down.

We stopped to walk through the drink stop at the bottom, and when we looked up, Mr #2 was gone! Vanished. We knew that he was ahead of us because we'd stepped back to let him get to the table first, so we just cruised on at pace figuring that we'd find him again soon enough.

I think that it was heading up out of there that we got the first "Are you the 2 hour pacers. Are you on time? If we stick with you, will we make 2 hours?". Each time, we'd start chatting and encourage the people along, and the next time we hit a hill, they'd disappear :-(

We saw Mr #2 again in Macquarie St, but because of our "correct pace always" rule, we didn't catch him until Argyle St where he was starting to weave a bit. As soon as we crested the hill, he recovered and wanted to head off again. And thus it continued. We picked him up again down the end of Hickson, and took him a bit slower up Hunter (used up the 1 minute buffer we'd accidentally built up). Still, I noticed that his footfalls were getting heavier and heavier and the weaving was getting more pronounced. Sure enough, about the same place we lost Mr #1, Mr #2 dissappeared down the plughole.

By this stage, I was starting to feel pretty blah - physically great, but mentally very let down. We pressed on, picking up a couple of cool runners, but once again losing them on the hills (though I later found out that they both managed to keep the blue and yellow hats in sight and finish with satisfying times :-) ).

Coming up the Argyle Cut for the last time, I had one bloke look over at me and go "Oh! Damn! I've been just ahead of you since the 10k. I've been listening to you. You're the only ones talking. Every one else is too stuffed!". He stuck with us till Kent St and then move ahead. One more satisfied customer :-)

Along Kent St and Hickson Rd, Horrie started calling to everyone to come and catch us. A lot of people used the hill down to Hickson to pass us, but once we got onto Hickson itself, the passing dried up. We were yelling encouragement; Horrie even pointed to one bloke and said "You, in the black, you can catch us" and the bloke was so startled at being singled out that he sped up and did exactly that!

I crossed the line at 1:59:40 by my watch (it took us 2 1/2 minutes to cross the line at the start, so we worked on net time the whole way on the assumption that 2 hour runners would have started around the same place as us). I took off the chip, picked up the medal and wandered off into the mess that was the finishing area feeling very emotionally empty, but two things happened to really brighten up my day. The first was finding Angela, who was absolutely over the moon with her 6 minute pb (and she deserved every minute of it). The second was running back down the course, finding Lucky Legs near the start of Hickson Rd and enquiring whether I could join the royal procession (to which I received gracious assent). I have never seen anyone as focussed on a task as she was. Clearly she was hurting, but just as clearly, there was no way she was going to stop. Ewan's sprint training obviously has been having an effect, because not only did she finish, not only did she sprint (!!) to the line, but she also overtook the leading lady in the next lower age group in the last 100m. Awesome.

I started by saying that I was feeling nothing about the run, but recounting it here has made me realise all the good things that happened. Maybe it wasn't so blah after all. Thankyou for listening... :-)

Gnome

Waiting for Sunday fun

I've kept it pretty short this week in deference to the SMH on Sunday. Tuesday was a mona fartlek with Angela (nice to have her back from all her traveling around). I covered exactly the same distance in the 20 minutes as I did last time that I did this in Feb (4.6km), and Ange managed about 50m more.

Wednesday was a nice 5.5k tempo run at 4:30 pace, and tonight we did a session in the park across in front of Drummoyne Rowers. 4 laps of approx 640m with increasing intensity for each lap. Then 4x 60m sprints followed by two more laps at 2nd highest intensity. Aerobically easier in the last two laps, but harder in terms of muscle fatigue. Oh, and of course I did the 25k ride to work this morning.

I won't do anything more until Sunday, not that I'm going to be pushing myself (physically, at least). The organisers asked Striders if they could supply some pacers, and not having TA to run with, and not feeling like beating myself up trying to get a PB on a crowded, hilly course, I offered my services. What I've ended up with is a group of 8 people who I am supposed to shepherd around in 120 min. The 120 is no concern and I know that I'm pretty good at setting a pace right from the start and sticking to it, but I'm still doing a bit of lying awake at night. I'd hate for someone to miss out on their best chance because of something dumb that I did.


I'll be right. It'll be fun. It always is :-)

Gnome

[edit - I've just found out that Horrie will be joining me on the 120 ferry. No more worries now. We'll have a ball!]

[2nd edit - I should also add that we are not going to be marked as pacers - the organisers are just trialing it this year and are worried about groups of people blocking up the narrow sections, so they have select groups of pace-ees who we will be introduced to before the race. I can't say that it's what I had in mind when I volunteered, but so be it...]

Football Fartlek

A good week for me, a little less so for tiger angel. She's booked in to see a specialist about the Thyroid and Adrenal things (in about a month) and on the advice of her doctor she's gone off all her current medication until then. Thus, the pickup that she was starting to feel is no longer so apparent. In addition, the displaced ribs are still causing problems, though we don't know whether that's because the ribs have moved again or just because her back and arm are not yet over the problem. :-( Everything is going to get better; we just don't know when yet.

Last year (incidentally, we discovered tonight this blog is now just over 1 year old; how time flies when you're having fun) tiger angel asked our kids to not give her a mother's day prezzie, but to run with her in the Mother's Day classic instead. This year Micro obliged again (said it saved him buying a present :-) ), but Macro and Angel both figured that presents were much easier than running... Anyhow, TA really didn't think that she had a 4k run in her, but with her normal indomitable will coming into play, she decided that she'd do it anyhow and see how she went.

We got there early so that we could cheer on Caro in the 8k, and she gave us plenty to cheer about with a rock solid run; about the same pace as the 10k in Canberra, but much more comfortable, she said. For our race, Micro decided to run at his own pace, so I strapped my Garmin on him and sent him off with strict instructions to keep to a 4:30 pace. In the long run, very heavy traffic at the beginning and a sore calf kept him behind that, but he still finished in 19:57, so he was quite satisfied.

(As another aside, he backed up to play footy this afternoon - a very hard fought match which his team won 5-8-38 to 1-14-20. Yes folks. That was 1 goal, 14 behinds. My personal and slightly biased view was that the number of behinds was an indication of how well our team defended, but as he is the fullback, I would say that, wouldn't I? :-) Anyhow, back to tiger angel...)

I was really impressed by how TA handled the race. We expected to be running about a 6 minute pace, and whilst I could hear that aerobically she was fine, I could also tell from her face that she was hurting pretty badly. In spite of that, she held a really steady pace, running just under 5:30's (after the 7 minute first k due to congestion) to finish in 22:43. It's nothing like the pace she would run if well, but it is absolute proof of her mental strength. I'm so proud of her (but gee, I hope she quits now for a while. I really don't want her to break!).

We had the wonderful pleasure of meeting Ellie about half way up the hill from Mrs Macquarie's Chair, and then again after the finish when we could talk a little more easily :-) We met a number of CRs for the first time at the MD Classic last year, and it was really nice to do it again. Having watched her hightail it up the hill in front of us in her first-ever race, I can confidently predict many more races in her future (roll on September, Ellie :-))

After a draining morning's effort, what better therapy than a little visit to TA's favourite snow board emporium, where she came away with a brand new board and bindings. Now she just has to wait the couple of months till she can christen them. Happy Mother's Day, sweetheart!

______________________________

On my side of things, it's been a pleasing week. Nothing spectacular, but nice steady progress that says I'm pretty much back to where I was before Canberra. I did 9k on Tuesday, 14 on Wednesday at 5:10 pace, another 5 on Thursday at Run Club (mini-6ft. Most enjoyable) and 17.5k on Saturday. That, plus the 4 k this morning gives me my biggest post-Canberra week of 50k.

Finally, this afternoon I got to do the boundary umpiring at Micro's footy match. I really wanted to wear my Garmin just so I could see how far I run on the boundary, but I thought that it might look a bit wanky to all the (non-running) other parents. :-) It's so unlike the normal steady running that I do - it's all about walking the boundary when the play is on the other side, and then sprinting like the blazes when the play comes your way. I found myself running alongside the play at one stage and I realised that I was keeping up with some of the fastest young men in the team. This was simultaneously pleasing and very suprising! The best part is that, apart from this morning when I didn't stretch properly, I haven't had any problems with the knee at all, which gives me lots more confidence for SMH next week.

(sleepy) Gnome

I just don't understand me...

Last Tuesday, I made it to 5k before my knee started hurting. Wednesday I only got to 2.5k before it blew up (unfortunately by then I was 2k from home, so I ended up doing 4.5k, the last half in pain). Very unhappy, and not a little depressed. Tiger angel had her appointment with Dr Pain (more of this later) and so she secured an appointment for me next Monday. Knowing that there was no way that I'd be able to do Striders on Saturday, I figured that I'd do Run Club on Thursday simply because I could drop out whenever it got too much.

Given that the knee problems are actually related to too tight glute and back muscles, I started Run Club with some pretty solid glute & back stretches. The session was the regular 3k time trial. My pb of 12:03 was set about 6 months ago, and try as I might, I haven't been able to break the magic 12. Well, on Thursday night I ran 11:48, and my leg didn't trouble me at all!

On that basis I figured that it was worth giving the 10k a burl on Saturday, prefaced by the same stretch routine. I decided to head out at just under pb pace (4:20) and see what happened. What happened was that I sat pretty well smack on it. It got really hard to keep going from about 6k onwards - if it wasn't for a woman I was following (don't tell TA :-)), I would have fallen off for certain. She was great. If I slacked off for a moment she started to run away and I'd have to work to get her back. By 8k I was behind the 8 ball, and the 9th wasn't any better. It was just incredibly hard work. Then all of a sudden, some second wind cut in and I took off. The sky was blue, the sun was shining and running was easy (!!??). I did the last k in 3:45 to finish in 43:33, a 10 second pb. What's more, no knee pain!

So, in the space of a day, I went from not being able to run 2k to knocking over two pb's in 3 days. Like I said - I just don't understand me...

_____________________________________

On the tiger angel recovery front, there's been two pieces of good, if painful news. Number one was that the reason that her arm and back have been hurting for the last month is that she's had a couple of displaced (almost dislocated) ribs from overbalancing while hanging her bike up and the muscles around the area had locked up completely. The cure was more painful than the malady, but she's recovering well from the bruising now. The second bit of good news is that the docs have found she has underperforming adrenal and thyroid glands which may (should?) account for a lot of the lethargy and listlessness over the last half a year. Now we have a diagnosis, all we need is for the treatment to kick in and have a positive effect. We wait with bated breath and fingers crossed :-)

Gnome

Going downhill

Last week was generally OK. Did a 5k (tues), 10k (wed) and a speed session (Run Club thurs), all of which were OK, though generally feeling a bit sore in the knee. I'll be happy when the tightness frees up a bit more.

Saturday morning at the CR5k challenge was great as always. I was a bit unsure about running at pb pace, so when CR Queen Bee asked for a pacer at 4:15, all of us starting at 21minutes leapt at it (maybe they - Ray (eagle), Wayne (JD) & Rob (Mr WT) - were all feeling blah too :-)). Anyhow, the run was fun, and even though Bee couldn't quite keep up the pace - we finished in 21:35, so we were 20 seconds behind plan - I felt plenty healthy and very comfortable. Once again my knee whinged on the way home. Breakfast was magnificent as always, made more so by the waitressing mix up that left me with two breakfasts. I didn't need lunch or arvo tea that day :-)

After such a good day, for some reason I just got the Blahs. Sunday morning I just rolled over and decided to run in the evening. In the evening I ate lots of chocolate decided to run Monday. Monday I rolled over again (and ate lots more chocolate in the evening). Finally this morning I turned over a new leaf, actually got out of bed on time and went for a 9k run at 5:10 pace. The good news is that my knee waited till after the 5k point before it got yucky; the bad news is that it didn't wait any longer :-(

Let's see what happens tomorrow...

Gnome

p.s. Tiger Angel has picked up a sore throat from somewhere, so she's in an activity-free zone at the moment. Her only activity tomorrow is a trip to Dr Pain. Talk about a sucker for punishment :-)