Almost the end...

...of the year, and the last major race (CC Half, today). As I've mentioned before, things are gradually coming back together and I'm very happy that my last 5k, 10k & HM races have all produced season PBs. Today's time was not only a season pb, but also my second fastest time ever. Still 5 minutes over last year's magical mark, but I'm still pretty damn happy :-)

Tiger angel's taper for the 9k comprised glute-trashing sessions on Thursday night and Saturday morning, so she was already amongst the walking wounded before she even started. She was only supposed to be taking it easy, but I'm not sure that 'easy' is a word in her vocabulary, so the glutes are even more trashed tonight. In fact, we're both walking around like a couple of old crocks. (As an aside, I was talking to a friend last week who asked me "what does it feel like to be fit? Do you sleep better? Walk with a spring in your step?". I had to be honest. "Nup" I said, "I'm tired and I ache all the time!". Not much of an advertisement, am I? :-) :-)

Johnny Dark & I had a very similar race to hers, I think. Both very even (although JD & I averaged 4:25s for the first 5 k and were averaging 4:45s by the last 5, so we were steady, but getting steadily slower) and both pretty tough. I noticed in the early stages that we were doing 4:25s, so I guess that I should have slowed down then, because there was no way that either of us were going to keep that pace up for 21k. Still, hope springs eternal I guess. :-)

I went anaerobic at about 12k, so everything from there was pretty uncomfortable. There were so many times that I just wanted to drop off the pace, but there was JD running along strongly beside me. At the same time, he said a number of times to "go on ahead if I drop off. I'm at my limit". I think that if the truth be known, neither of us wanted to let the other one down, and so we ran on... 95:59 :-)

Gnome