The post-Canberra honeymoon continues

Before Canberra, I was told that there's be a golden period of PBs after the immediate recovery was over. As I've noted before, this has turned out to be true, but it's also going longer than I would ever have expected. The field at Striders on Saturday was smaller than normal because of the GC mara, but it was perfect running weather - cool but not cold, and still. I figured that another shot at the pb was on the cards, so I aimed to go out at 4:15 and see if I could stick to it for a 42:30 finish. Nailed it for the first k, and never varied by more than 5 seconds over the rest of the race (apart from the last k at 4:05).

Result? 42:43, a 26 second PB. Freespirit keeps predicting absurd results for these races (his suggestion this time was 41:45!!??), but a few months ago 42:43 would have sounded absurd, so maybe he's just a man ahead of his time :-)

Now, setting that aside, what else happened this week? Tuesday was still too ugly after W2G - no way was I ready to run. Things got better during the day, so on Wednesday morning I gave it a shot on a special change-my-mind-any-time-want-and-home-isn't-too-far-away course. It wasn't really pretty, but I seemed to loosen up as I went along and ended up doing 12.5k at a 5:20 pace.

Run Club on Thursday was a 2x800, then 10 min of 30s on, 30s off, followed by 5x400 with ~45s recovery. I felt really tired and muscle sore by the end - the lunges at the end were sheer murder :-(

Finally, this morning I headed out to Lindfield for the Strider Star. Now, as I have commented in recent weeks, I am focussing on hills more over the next few months, but this morning was insane! Here's the elevation graph, and I cut out one 5k section that apparently has the worst hills of the lot (didn't know that when I cut it, honest!).

I covered the 25k at 5:40 pace; I really didn't want to walk one single step of the way, but that last little pitch in the graph was a set of stairs and it just broke me. I was a very tired little bunny when I finished this morning. Still, every one of those hills is another hill in the bank come Willy to Billy time, so I guess it's worth it.

Total for week - 53k
Total for month - 207k

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