Tuesday, 8 January - AV Shield

Woke up feeling really heavy in the legs from the day before, which was not a good sign. Nevertheless I am going to have days like this in the coming weeks where I am going to be training heavily and not be completely fresh. Going to bed late didn't help either. Very pleased though to see that I had lost a kilo in weight, so only 5 more to go before I am back to where I was for the Vic Champs in 2006

Anyhoo, off to work for a bludge. AV finals coming up, plus a lot of club stuff in preparation for the election of Winter officials and as usual I am driving most of the organising. Not sure how much actual work got done today in between getting club things together

Running today was Athletics Victoria track & field at Aberfeldie. Never actually heard of this place until I moved to the Northern suburbs. I guess its just a fancy pocket of Essendon, like Glenferrie is a fancy part of Hawthorn. To add to the confusion the track is called the Moonee Valley Athletics Track!

Managed to leave early enough that I did not need to run for my train and got to the station to find the previous train was running late so caught that when it arrived. The train then decided to stop in the loop for a bit so that by the time it go to North Melbourne, it WAS the next train!

Nice and early to the venue and managed to dispense all the paperwork I had prepared during the day. As it turned out I ran out of paperwork - hadn't anticipated our best turn up for the season

My first event was the 100 metres. With all our best sprinters out of the AV Shield Final (should we make it), due to a Pro Meetc clash, I figured I better do one just in case. Thought I got a good start but time was a disappointing 14.47. I figured I had the 800 metres to come and could redeem myself there. Not so! My best time this season has been 2:16 and when they called my heat, guess who was the last guy to be called! Yep, so everyone in my heat had run quicker than me over the season. Still, it was only a matter of a few seconds so it couldn't be that bad, right?

From the gun I didn't feel good and was really pushing to stay in touch with the second last guy. Wasn't too happy that they didn't call out first lap time like they usually do. It was why I did not set my watch. Going through the bell lap I was feeling horrible, really heavy in the legs and it was an effort to keep going. Finish time was 2:19 and I have not run that slow for three years. Not happy, Jan!

Some antics by Adam Larsson and the boys put me into better spirits and I then had the 4 x 200 m Relay. The girls had a bit of a hiccup with poor Bec Collyer collapsing on her third leg, which means the girls were a DNF. They have been dominating this season so it was not that costly a miss. I ran the first leg for our Division 3 team (the "seconds") and felt pretty good, better than I had all night. Think I passed the baton with us in fourth, so a pretty good result. Not sure where we finished there

The 3000 metres was up next but beforehand I went and put my name down for the Shot Put and Javelin. Saw Coburg Little Aths president Steve Wright who had come down to support his daugghter competing for Keilor St Bernards (we DON'T want to do there, grrr!!) and we had a brief chat before I saw everyone lined up for the 3000

The race plan was to do 80 second laps. That's usually my 5000 metre race plan but I figured that as I was still building up my fitness I could at least do 80's for 7.5 laps for a 10:00 finish time. Lining up I thought maybe that was a bit ambitious and decided 82's would be okay. As it turned out I did the first km in 3:24 and feeling comfortable, the second km also in 3:24 but starting to feel the hurt before finishing strongly with a 3:17 for 10:05. That made the whole night worth it and I was pretty rapt with that performance given the PB is only 25 seconds or so off that. Kind of made a concious effort to do that last km quicker and was pleased with the finish

Did my obligatory embarrassing shot put (4.7 metres) and Javelin (11 metres), but you only need a legal throw to earn important points for the club in the lower divisions. Next up was the 400 metres and only managed to scrape into a heat that they put together with the dregs of who was left after the main ones had raced. Up against arch-nemesis Danny Hawksworth and thought I had him in the front straight only to be overtaken in the last ten metres. Thought we ran a quick time but 62 seconds was the result, so not as quick as I thought

Pretty shocking start to the night but last half was much better. Got home at 10:30 pm, had a little bit of dinner, chatted to Jo on MSN for a while and didn't get to bed until 1:00 am. Sure am going to be sore tomorrow

TOTAL DISTANCE = 4.5 kilometres including warm down