Goodna Jacaranda Festival Fun Run

I reread last year's blog entry for this event to check my time. I did it then in 42:04. Sadly I was a bit slower this year and finished in 43:13. Oh well! next year will be better.

One guy, who would be in his sixties, finished in 36:41. How's that? His name was Tom Nugent. Anyone ever heard of him?

For our $5 entry fee we each (about 25 of us) got a certificate with our official times and a medallion. The same young fellow, 17 year old Darryl Crooke, who won last year, won again this year in the same time of 34 Mins. He said he hadn't been training.

Still here

Yes I am still here. Life has been a little hectic of late and I am afraid tha the blog got a long way down the priority list.... just the blog, not my running friends.

I have been running my 7K circuit regularly and managing to keep my time under 35 minutes. I am hoping this will be good training for the 500K Relay which begins on 17 Nov.

This coming Sunday I am doing a 10K fun run at The Goodna Jacaranda Festival. $5:00 entry fee.

Thursday I have the 5.13K Cool Night Classic in the Brisbane City. So ther are still things happening.

7K Circuit

Our local Council has constructed a road through some bushland. This road connects to existing roads creating a 7K circuit for me. Good of them wasn't it. I ran the circuit on Tuesday, not feeling too good after my aborted marathon effort, in 40 mins. Today I ran it in 32. Must have been feeling a bit better.

My first Marathon DNF

What a sad day for me in Toowoomba on Sunday. My first DNF in a marathon. During the second lap of four I felt myself tiring considerably. During the third lap I had to let my training buddy, Tegwen, go. She was running really well and went on to come second behind Siri.

I pulled the plug at 28K. I had tried walking and running, but my legs just didn't seem to want to do any more so I listened to them. I thought I would not gain anything by pushing myself and I did not want to spend weeks recovering. The 500K relay is in 5 weeks and I don't want to let the team down. I will concentrate my training over the next few weeks on preparation for the Relay.

Robyn, my wife, thought that it was great that I could exercise enough common sense to call it a day. There is always another one.

Road to Toowoomda

The Toowoomba Marathon is looming. Only 5 more days. As I have said previously, I haven't done any marathon specific training so it will be a steady as she goes sort of marathon. I am just trying to think of it as a long training run. I just hope that the weather is better than last year. I don't really want to be running in the cold, wind and rain.

I did a 15K run yeasterday and didn't feel all that great, so it will be an interesting marathon.

Confidence Booster

This morning I met my running buddy, Tegwen, at Park Road at 5:00AM. We both needed to test ourselves to check our preparedness for the Toowoomba Marathon. We thought 30K should do the trick and set off along the river to Breakfast Creek and a bit beyond to take us to 15k out and then run the same course back. I think Tegwen's fitness is bit better than mine at the moment....we are usually pretty evenly matched. Today I was struggling a bit to keep up with her but I was determined to do so as I the extra effort wouldn't do me any harm.

Though I was pleased to finish the 30K I didn't feel to bad and I think we achieved what we set out to do. We passed our test and received a great confidence boost. Those niggling doubts about my ability to finish a marathon on October 15 have been stiffled to a large degree.