A hectic few days with Friday afternoon evening being the Striders Awards night. Seemed to go down ok, for sure Scott Westcott was a great find as a guest speaker.
Saturday saw myself and my boy head into the city to pick up my race kit, after that he enjoyed a chocolate paddle pop while I knocked back a coffee and muffin. The rest of Saturday involved what can only be described as a form of S&M, buying and then attempting to assemble various cardboard boxes imported from Scandinavia with wierd names (ie IKEA) in an attempt to freshen up the kids bedrooms.
Up at 5am on Sunday, made some toast, managing to set off the newly installed smoke alarm, but somehow not waking anyone! Sorted out the kit bag and then into the city, grabbing a park near The Palisades pub (the reason will be obvious later). Then into the Rocks to the house of the Strider members who provide a base for us each year.
General nervous chit chat, getting ready and comparing notes with the Langsworths on Garmin 305 options and settings. Found out that Joel was the unofficial 90 minute pacer and that Danielle was also aiming for 90 so determined to keep an eye out for them. A quick warm up run down to the start and slid into a position about 5 back from the front and right next to Joel and Danielle amongst many other Striders and Cool Runners. Quite a few were having problems getting signal lock on their GPS units.
Watched with envy as the preferred runners did their later warmup and eventually filed in just in front of us. A bit of a wait and than all of a sudden the gun sounded, pretty much without warning. A quick shuffle through the timing gate and then we were off with pretty much free running within 100m. Danielle was having major Garmin problems with it continually sounding an alarm as a distance alert. By about 2km it was obvious her Garmin was struggling and I tried to diagnose on the fly, but when she said it was not measuring distance I suggested that she might need to reset as it seemed not to have a signal lock and the chances of getting one at race pace through the city canyons was remote....
At each of the climbs I drifted off a little but managed to pick them back up with a bit more effort on the flat or downhill. Through this I could see that Professor was around 100m up the road. At the St Marys Cathedral u turn he saw me and I gave a yell and said I was coming. Sure enough at about the 10km mark we caught him and I urged him to join us, even though my elastic band struggle was starting to take effect. The 10km split was 42:16 so just ahead of pace.
Sure enough as we climbed Pitt St to Hunter I drifted off again, this time for good. Now it was the challenge of trying to keep things together for as long as possible. It felt like a swarm of runners were overtaking but in general I was only slightly slipping. Just near the St Mary's hairpin Kanagra steamed past and I got a chance to check who else might be looming. No surprise that Barry was only about 20m back and Professor not much further and certainly in reach.
Really focussed on speed on the downhill back to Circular Quay and mentally prepared for the Argyle cut climb. I think the hill reps paid off here as I again held my own through here and then kept on grinding away. At about 200m out Tim (Redback and I think Katie/Kit) yelled out to me and then in quick succession I also heard them encourage Professor who was obviously very close!! I just opened up with everything that was left. Actually picked off a few people in this dash and crossed the line absolutely spent. Seems Professor came through about 5 sec's later!
Ended up with a hand time from the Garmin of 91:08 which, while not an overall PB, was a course PB of a nice round 5 minutes :). Had a quick chat with Professor and then caught up with many others, including seagull which confirmed I had the honours (this time) in our 2 way challege. Back to the Striders base catching up with many and freshening up before headed back to the Palisades, just in time to refresh my parking and share more war stories with many assorted Cool Runners.
Heaps and heaps of great runs from many that I spoke to today, The Mad Guz collecting 3rd outright, truly mad.... Pretty much every 2nd person I spoke to had carbed some time of some sort of PB. It does not get much better than that!!
The RH achilles had been complaining since my run on Thursday and is tender tonight, ice and rest tomorrow, probably even accupuncture this week.
Stats
Distance 21.1km - derrr
Time 91:08
Avg Pace 4:19
Avg HR 176
Splits (summary)
5km 20:54
10km 21:22
15km 21:55
Spilts detail
1km 4:06 4:06
2km 4:10 8:16
3km 4:14 12:30
4km 4:21 16:51 (Hunter Street)
5km 4:03 20:54 (down to Lady Mac Chair)
6km 4:14 25:08
7km 4:28 29:36
8km 4:04 33:40
9km 4:28 38:08 (Argyle cut)
10km 4:08 42:16
11km 4:12 46:28
12km 4:23 50:51
13km 4:30 55:21 (struggling!)
14km 4:31 59:52 (Hunter St again)
15km 4:17 64:09
16km 4:22 68:31
17km 4:42 73:13 (out of Lady Mac Chair)
18km 4:13 77:26
19km 4:46 82:12
21.1km 8:56 91:08 (missed 20km marker!)
10 comments:
Great run Dave. Not the PB you were hoping for but certainly moving in the right direction. I am sure you will be carving up PBs over the next couple of months the way you are going. Well done mate!
Dave have that smoke alarm looked at!
Good run mate, missed you yesterday, next time.
Great result Dave, that 90mins is looming so tenatiously now.
What is the next race on the schedule?
92 is my next goal for a half marathon but I am going to have to pull my fingers out if I want to do that at Gold Coast!!! Might follow your plan of attack to help me.
Terrific Run Dave. Much better than last years effort and a course PB. That sub 90 is very close now.
Congrats Dave. A course PB is the next best thing to a PB :-)
Hope that achilles is feeling better.
Great running as always :-) Tim and I saw a few great duels to the finish! You certainly put the pedal down when we yelled out to prof! Congrats :-) Friday was fun... and Scott was a great speaker!!
Fantastic result Dave - I'm glad that it is starting to come together for you. Unfortunately I couldn't come to play at the pub....
Congratulations mate.
Fantastic result and great to see you running so well now. Tough course to break 90 on, so that's a sensational time
Sensational run Dave. I'm glad to see that you are keeping Seagull and Profesor in line ;-)
dang...i thought you were going to post about peanut butter.
great race and fabulous time, dave!
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