BRRC 10K Champs

What a good race! I went without any real plan of how I was going to tackle the race. I set out from the start with Robert Song. I left him behind for about 2 K and then he passed me making it look so easy. He is in very good form at the moment. I managed to hang onto an average pace of 4:12 - 4:15 to finish in 42:23. This has been a consistent pace for me over my last few 10K races. I was pleased to be able to do it again. I won my age category. I have a window of opportunity to do this while Ron Peters is still in the 50-54 bracket. Ron won the race yesterday by a very good margin. He moves up to my category next April.

A Better Sunday

Because I didn't intend running very far on Sunday I didn't get to Park Road until 5:30AM. The rest of the crew had left so I was on my own. I headed out along the River towards New Farm and Newstead. I was surprised to catch up with 3 of the early crew under the Story Bridge. It turned out they had only left about 10 minutes before me. Further along I caught up with 2 more about 500 m past the end of the floating walkway. They were heading to Newstead and across to the Hospital then through Victoria Park and back to Milton. That sounded good to me so I kept going on my own and got to Park Road in 98 minutes having covered 21K at an average pace of 4:45. I felt good all the way. Totally the reverse from last week's horror run.

Less than 2 weeks to the Gold Coast Marathon.

Long Slow Run

After yesterday's freezing cold blustery weather I thought this morning might bring more of the same. Thankfully it was much better. No blustery wind and nowhere near as cold.

I missed my running buddy, Tegwen, this morning. She tripped during speed training and has well and truly busted her ankle. No Gold Coast Marathon for her this year.

I set out from Park Road at 5:00 AM with Bruce who is training for GC but is a tad slower than me. We stuck together for the first 19K by which time my legs were hurting like hell. I don't know what was causing the muscle soreness but I was doing it tough. I thought if I sped up a bit it might help, so I left Bruce and tried to lift the pace a bit. I only managed to drop the average pace from 5:47 to 5:37 per K. After 35K and 3hrs16mins on my legs I was sure glad to get back to Park Road.

GC is only three weeks away. I hope my legs come good in that time.

Queensland Half Marathon

After having had a stomach ailment all week, I didn't have any great expectations for the half Marathon at Doomben on Sunday. I was still feeling off on Saturday and wondered if I would have enough stemina to get through the race on Sunday. Amazingly I felt a lot better Sunday morning and was glad to be there at the start. SpeedyGeoff and I sized each other up, played down our own expectations...you know the usual stuff. Neither of us felt like we were at our best.

Nevertheless, I gave it all I had. My average pace gradually slowed through the whole race and I finished with an averge of 4:27 per K and a time of 1:34:16. Not that bad cosidering the week I had had. I did pass Geoff along the way. I think the humidity, and it was humid, may have been giving him a bit of trouble.

I wasn't able to stay for the presentations and didn't find out until this morning that I came third in my category (M55-59). That put a smile on my face.