Barrenjoey Bashed

The title of today's STaR is the Barrenjoey Bash and it goes from Mona Vale up to Palm Beach and of course back again. For the uninitiated this area can be quite hilly!

I was interested in how the different groups would form up, given the Striders email discussions during the week. An amazing group for 6am, I reckon close to 50 with the MTG shifting to 6am now. Most of the faster runners from last week migrated to 6:20 and so we had a nice compact group of 7. Was pretty sure I was going to do the 30 today but waited to see how the run unfolded before the turnoff point. It always amazes me how a lot of STaRS have a bugger of a hill right near the start!. Once we got over that it was down to Newport and we had pretty much already caught the 6am group and should have kept running as they had just finished their water stop at the surf club. But we stopped as well and then did catch the end of the conga line just as we reached the narrow bush track section around the headland between Newport and Bilgola. We didn't get clear as a bunch until Bilgola but from there it was pretty smooth sailing, just a tad under 5:30 min/km pace.

At Whale Beach it was decision time and 4 turned off, just leaving Phil (Spud), Adrian and myself. We kept rolling along pretty well but I really struggled up the first major hill climbing out of Palm Beach and the others slowly ran away from me. I kept them in sight and as the 6:30 & faster 6:20 guys came through on a nice long downhill I tagged back on but knew it was a matter of time. Had a big fuel stop at Careel Bay, downing a gel and then managed to take a slight short cut by accident, which in the end was handy. The Gel kicked in around Avalon and then the rest of the 6:20 caught up. Then there was an absolute mother of a hill coming out of Avalon around the back of Bilgola where I really blew up. From there it was a case of just bringing it home.

The stats :
30.5 km in 2:51, avg pace of 5:36 min/km.

All in all, quite happy, my longest run for quite a while and after a very refreshing swim and an Endura Optimiser on the way home the legs actually feel quite ok!

Tomorrow is the ultrasound and xray time to determine if I have anything serious to worry about before I start to pick up the distance.