Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict

After a relatively easy recovery week last week, tried to ramp it up a little this week.

Tues - 13k 58:34 (HR 151 4:30)
Wed - 9.5k 41:22 (HR 148 4:21)

On both these runs I felt a little niggle in my left ankle a few times but nothing after the run.

Thu - 18.8k 90:38 (HR133 4:49)
A little slower but again a felt the ankle a few times.

Fri - 9.5k 43:30 (HR 138 4:34)
Didn't feel the ankle on the run but did when I stopped. Put an ice pack on just in case.

Sat - 9k Ran first 2.5k with Kewell so that was nice and easy and then finished with 6.5k at 4:35 pace with no problems. So at least I felt comfortable going out and doing a long run on Sunday.

Sun 31.5k 2:34:23 (146 4:54) - I had wanted to do 36k today but pulled the pin on the extra 5.5k as I thought it wasn't worth the risk of pushing the ankle too much. Still it was a good run and the ankle only started to niggle right at the end. I have an ice pack on it again so will have to see how it pulls up tomorrow.

This is starting to worry me. The actual niggle is really only very minor but an injury is something I haven't had to deal with for such a long time and it is causing me more head problems than physical ones. Although I shouldn't complain, I could be this guy.






The title of my last post was a Pink Floyd song title. I thought it was much more appropraite than the Floyd title I used for this post.

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

This week has been just been easy runs in order to recover from the Gold Coast Half but I still managed to rack up 83k. As well I picked up a RS Index Best of 643 for my 13k run on Wednesday night by doing it in avg pace of 4:50 at HR 133. I suppose it is hardly a surprise to see that I am in top aerobic condition given my good run in the Half.

YIKES!!!
When I put that 1:26:48 time into McMillian it says 3:03 for the Marathon. Given I thought with another 6 weeks training I could knock some more time off the Half, then the Marathon predictions is getting tantalisingly close to that magical sub 3 marker. I certainly hope to go under 3:10 but at this point I am not entertaining the thought of a sub 3. At the moment, it is just gets down to doing the training over the next six weeks and setting a target close to race day based on where my training gets me to.

It was good news to have the Brisbane Marathon course released. It is very much as it has been in other years so no surprises and basically flat except for going over the Goodwill Bridge four times.

Gold Coast Half Marathon

Time: 1:26:48 Place 232 M50-54 12th on Nett Times

Over the last few years I feel I have developed a good understanding of how my training will convert into a race situation.

After Doomben a month ago where I ran 1:29:36 I went into the Gold Coast race confident I could take some time off that mark. I thought for a start that the many hair pin turns were worth 20 seconds and the conditions that day were humid so I thought another 20 seconds for that. So an equivalent performance would get me under 1:29. So how much could I improve in 4 weeks? I thought that around a minute was going to be about what I could pull out.

As I have said before I plucked some target times out of the air at the start of the year for the three Halfs and put them up on the wall at work. Basically it was the first in 4:20 pace (1:31), then 4:15 ( 1:29:48) and then 4:10 (1:27:40) for the Gold Coast. I hit the first two so I thought even though it may be a stretch I would target the 4:10 pace and see if I could hang on at the end.

I set the alarm to get up at 3:25 am but woke at 2:10 am and couldn't get back to sleep. So this left me plenty of time to get there. A 75 minute drive and I arrived at the race precinct at 5:10 am. In next to no time it was off to line up with the other 8,000 starters. I got a position not too far from the front. Together at the start it was surprisingly warm but once we got running it became somewhat chillier and the hands were cold for the first 5ks.

I settled quickly into a pace just a few seconds below target pace but was worried I was going out too quickly so from about 5 to 10 k slowed so I was more in line with my target pace. When I got to 10k in 41:25 with a 15 second buffer I had an inkling this was going to be a good day as I was feeling very fresh.

After the turn around I felt I could up the pace and stepped it up to 4:05. Even though I didn't find this too taxing I didn't want to go too early either. But the Ks went by, I was constantly overtaking people and I was still feeling strong. When I got to 17k and had 17 minutes to get under 1:27 I knew a sub 1:27 was in the bag.

Of the three Halfs I have done I must say this was the easiest. The Twilight was just too warm and humid and the lack of water stops made the last couple of Ks really tough. At Doomben, I slowed quite a bit in the last couple of Ks but here I was able to keep it going all the way to the finish.

As you can imagine I very happy with the time yet I know I can improve on that with a bit more targeting for a specific race. I had no taper at all for this race. Unfortunately I have no plan to do anymore Halfs this year and now I can focus on the Brisbane Marathon. If only they would reveal the Course I would be a lot more comfortable about it.