Of dreams and nightmares...

I've just been reading reports of the Melbourne Marathon and all the heartache and accomplishments. We're a strange bunch aren't we, the way that we push ourselves to achieve in the absence of any "real" reason ('real' in the eyes of the rest of the world, that is). We all have our dreams. The nightmare part is the preparation - you may guess from this that I haven't had such a good week...

I've been fighting off a bit of a chest infection all week. The water running on Tuesday went OK (followed by 3 x 50m freestyle in my own uniquely ugly style). Because of the time wasted on the swimming, I didn't get my strength stuff done. I have to do something about that. On Tuesday night I didn't get to bed until 2:30 am, so I used the lurgy as an excuse to not do the mid-week long run on Wednesday (and slept in instead).

Run Club on Thursday was a hills session - 5 laps of Tim's hill loop. I kept it pretty even until the last one - 4:37, 4:37, 4:34, 4:37, 4:47. Then we did a hills ladder - 4 cones up the hill, run from the bottom to the first 'rung' and back, then to the second and back, etc, up to the top, then working back down the ladder. After recovery, we did it again, but only working up. It all got a bit testosterone-laden on the last run, ending in an all-out sprint with yours truly getting mown down by the fast blokes. Ah well, I never was too stong on the testosterone front! :-) We finished up with 2 more laps of the hill loop, which after the excesses on the ladder were a little slower in 4:49 and 4:43.

Once again, I used the lurgy excuse to avoid my strength exercises on Friday, but I was (as always) looking forward to the striders 10k on Saturday down at Homebush. I have dificulties with the Homebush course, but I really don't know why. Someone suggested that it is because you can't mentally break it up the same as other courses and I think that has some resonance, but at the same time I can't logically see why that would be so. Anyhow, maybe I'm just preparing excuses.

I warmed up with CRs Evie and Chunderbolt, and then Evie and I wandered up to the 40-45 minute zone in the starting pack. Our aim was to try for a 42:xx (the lower the better), but we spent a good time waiting for the start practicing our excuses. As a race, it was a good 'learning opportunity' :-). We started a bit too enthusiastically, and died in the second half (4:17, 4:13, 4:08, 4:17, 4:19, 4:19, 4:25, 4:22, 4:32, 4:09). Evie dropped me at the 7k mark and gradually got about 10 seconds ahead. Thankfully, unlike the CR5k last week, I was able to find some reserve in the last k and pulled back her lead to only 2 seconds. She finished in 42:59 (a new pb for her) and I in 43:01 which is about 20 seconds over pb. I don't mind running times like that. You can't have a pb every time, and if I can be running in the same time zone as my pb, I figure that it's a pretty good run.

Finally, as if to wrap up a lurgy-ridden week, I tossed and turned all last night debating whether it was a good idea to run 25k with a chest infection or not. At 4:30 am I finally decided that it would be really dumb and that I should stay in bed, and at 5:10 I changed my mind yet again and got up. As it was, the run was really hard work and I'm still debating the intelligence of doing it. I know that they say 'that which doesn't kill you, etc', but at the moment I'm feeling like it killed me... Tomorrow's a rest day, and I'm sooooo looking forward to that... (cough, cough, splutter).

Gnome