A busy end of the week, with a visit to Melbourne, and then the usual crazy weekends around Christmas see a bit of a backlog on my reports so here's the abbreviated catch up.
Sunday
Today's STaR is the Xmas Brunch run which starts from The Spit and winds around the harbour to Shelley Beach through Manly. This is about 21km and given I was not going to do the "long cut" I thought I'd step up and run with the 6:20 gang. All was pretty good, although it was very humid, until we got to Clontarf. Then quite a few people wanted to divert off the course and run the bush. Well there would have been close to 20 people in the group, might have been a record for 6:20. But running through the bush that early over quite undulating tracks saw everyone string out. Sure enough large gaps appeared and a subset of us regrouped and moved back to the regular course near the large park. A more even pace all the way to Shelley Beach, where a few people continued to take the long course while the rest of us turned back. There were Striders all over the place as different groups took different options but in the end got back for just over 20km in 1:55, avg pace of 5:32. That surprised me but we really ran slower over the up and down bush track, even though it was harder. The main thing to take home from this run was I really need to improve my hill climbing, really struggled on those up hills.
A great morning then for the Striders presentation morning then a dash home for a BBQ at our place with a couple of families from Stella's primary school. Much eating and drinking and eventually everyone left at around 6pm, I was knackered!
Friday
A big presentation first thing Friday morning in Melbourne for work so headed down on Thursday to finish prep and do some general admin. Up at sparrows however and down to the closest Fitness First for another 1km interval session. Felt pretty good for the first couple, again at 3:40 pace but really started to stuggle on rep 5, only making it to 700m before pulling the pin. Was not real happy at the time as I thought this was one less than I did last week but as it turns out I did exactly the same. Next time I'll have a real crack at hanging on to finish rep 5 and I reckon that given the standing recovery I'd make it most of the way through rep 6. So 4.7 reps of 1km @ 3:40 with 1:50 standing recovery. When I get to 6 reps I'll drop away my recovery time to 90 secs.
Wednesday
Summer Series around North Ryde. Nice and close to home so I jogged down to the start. After reviewing the map for a while I realised this was going to be tough as Mike had set a real good course. This becomes apparent as there is no clear optimium route that stands out, even after looking for 30 mins. Anyway picked a route for outbound and inbound and the rest would fall into place based upon how I was going. In the end went a little too far out into a little too much bush and was pressed for time coming home, finishing 8 minutes late (ie -80 points). Quite a few had the same problem though and I'll wait for the scores to see what panned out.
9km in 52:39, again over quite a bit of singletrack bush and then some very nice hills!
This week the program looks like
Mon Rest
Tues Hill reps @ Cox's Rd
Wed Summer Series at Ermington (should be a faster course!)
Thurs Recovery run
Fri Thinking of maybe a 3km time trial...
Sat Rest
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