Back to reality!

Yes I am still alive folks. A combination of the post Canberra blahs along with a full on overseas business trip saw me take the easy way out and have a break.

I did some running while away, managing 3 x 10km hit outs in the morning while jet lag had me waking up early and I did not have too late a night the evening before. One of the guys from our office in France is also a runner and did New York last year in 3:15. So we hooked up and went out a couple of times around Disney World near our hotel. There was a pretty safe loop of just over a km around a lake/bay that we ran laps of. Certainly still banged up from Canberra as both the groin/adductor and interestingly enough my rhs ITB were not happy about this running caper again.

Back in Oz now and eventually motivated myself to get out this morning and have a good hit out and try out my new Shuffle. Felt real good on the run down to the LCNP weir and so much so opted to extend the run back through Ryde rather than heading straight home. Not a good move it seems, as I was climbing up to the gates and then along Lane Cove Rd my niggle in the groin area really started complaining. In the end it got so sore I walked the last km and a half. Did a heap of stretches once I got home and I'm pretty sure my hips might be out of alignment as the lower back/hips area "cracked" a couple of times as I really stretched this area out. Still very stiff/sore now, have popped a Naprosen and hopefully will go and see my osteo to check my alignment. This puts some risk into my planned run at the CR 5km challenge on Saturday.

Ignoring present issues from above I have been doing quite a deal of thinking about goals for the rest of the year to strive for. These fall into 2 categories, general and specific.

For the general side I am aiming to train through winter properly this time and will also run as much of the Striders 10km and Super Series events possible as well as others that make sense. Where I have done a particular race before then I will be aiming for a new PB. Through this program I aim to break 40min for 10km and depending upon how I am feeling try to break my PB and 90 @ SMH.

On the specific side I have decided I will run the Sydney Marathon and will go through a structured 12 week program for preparation. In these 12 weeks there will be quite a few races as well such as C2S and W2B for instance and I'll be using these as form guides for the Sydney run. Initial goal is to run a PB and I think 3:10 should be within reach if I train/prepare properly and race with a brain on the day. While it will be very tempting to aim for faster I now need some confidence over the longer races and 3:10 will do me for this year.