An exultation and a whinge

Desperately trying to stay awake... Don't know how long I'll last :-)

After last week's prevarications regarding how hard or easy to take things, there was no question this week - it was full steam ahead. As I once again didn't have access to the car on Tuesday morning, water running was out, so it was back to the local oval for 4 x 1460m reps. The times were consistent enough (6:02, 6:14, 6:10, 6:10), but the rescovery breaks just got longer as time wore on (96 s, 143 s, 172s). Must watch that next time.

Wednesday's run was one of the good ones. My normal 14k loop (which has some nasty hills) was cut slightly short by an ungent pit stop, but I did the 13.5k at an average of 5:02.

Run Club on Thursday was a lactate session. Alternating between Tim's "mini 6 ft" track at an easy pace and running hard on the time trial course, we did
1x lap 6ft (1k26m) (unknown time)
1x 940m (3:38)
2x laps 6ft (6:15 & 6:19)
1x 940m (3:37)
1x lap 6ft (5:50), which included a final 470m in 1:39!
I was very pleased that I could pull out that final sprint at the end of the evening.

Earlier in the week, tiger angel had noticed a problem with her gears during a spin session, and I diagnosed a bent gear adjuster thingy (that's the technical term), so she took it back to the shop this afternoon. As expected, the adjustment was quickly done, and then the mechanic mentioned that the seat post was damaged and that it "would have to be replaced some time". It turned out that "some time" meant "before the bike could be ridden again" so it had to be done on the spot. Lesson learned? Don't have carbon fibre seat posts. One very low speed bingle (caused by some woman who hasn't mastered the art of looking before turning in the middle of a large pack), and we're down $220. [[mumble, grumble, mutter]]

Anyhow, on to happier things. I lined up for the CR 5k challenge on Saturday with Evie & Johnny Dark and a few others (except that Evie and I were chatting to Uncle Dave up the back and missed the start by about 10 seconds. Oops :-)). Would have been a pb morning big time if it wasn't for the howling sou'westerly that was in our faces for 4 of the 5 k. The splits tell the story.
4:12
4:19
4:19
4:05 <- this was the sheltered k, and our normal speed
4:11
Enormously hard work, adequately recompensed by a slap-up breakfast in Leichhardt :-) Chunderbolt did a pb for the year (I'll bet that was the only pb of the day) and JD showed that he is gunna whip his pb next month!

Finally, on Sunday morning I headed for the Star run starting at Drumoyne Rowers. Alas, in the absence of ORunner's firm hand, and with the addition of a couple of 6:20am runners, the 6:10 group just went off at an insane pace. The first 8k were 5:12, 4:44, 4:42, 4:42, 5:04, 5:02, 4:43, 4:33 (this group is supposed to be doing 5:30). At this stage, it occurred to me that doing a long run and breathing like that were not mutually compatible, and I dropped off the back to run the next 5k on my own. At the bottom of the Gladesville bridge, I caught up with some 6am runners and stuck with them for the rest of the day (29k all up), and it was the best thing that I could have done. For a start, the bloke that I chatted to for most of the rest of the run is a dual 6 footer with a 3:20 marathon to his credit and times for the 10k & half not too far from mine. He said that he'd tried to run with the 6:10 group a number of times, but that he'd never managed to stick with them, and now he always just ran at 6am.

The run from there was great. It was a really good pace, we finished the 29k in under 2:30 and we did the last 4 k at 5:10 pace, so there was still plenty of juice in the tank. Just the way a long training run should be. That's my last attempt at 6:10. Looks like I'm going to have to get out of bed 10 minutes earlier from now on :-)

Tiger angel's day was even better. She had "one hour Walk/Run" on the program, so she ran over 7k, interspersed with 1.4k of walking. That's by far the longest that she's run for a year, and she finished feeling strong. Quake in your boots, you competitors - she's a'comin back! :-) :-)

Gnome

p.s. ...and she's gunna kill me for writing that last bit...