Friday, 8 February - Vic Champs

Got to bed late again last night. Taking half day off from work today because I have the Vic Champs on tonight and won't be seeing my children until tomorrow

We dropped Hamish off for his first day of kindergarten and he wanted to mummy tostay with him. Only natural I guess. Amelia cracked it when we left. Perhaps she thought it was another child care place and she was supposed to stay

Had breakfast in Coburg then off home. Had to deal with a few club emails - more drama's with the Ground Management of the track - and that took up all the time I had left until I had to get ready for work

Left work around 6:00 pm and got to Olympic Park nice and early. Popped the mighty Coburg Harriers banner onto the fence on the eastern Grandstand. Read my paperwork again which said go to the call room 25 mins before my event. A nice ten minute warm up and I was in the call room 30 minutes to event time. There I got told I need to check in an hour beore my event and they weren't going to let me race.

While waiting for them to decide if they want to let me race, I re-read the paperwork and buried in a paragraph above the Check In times is a bit where it says I need to go to the TIC 60 minutes before event start. Oops! I have this strange feeling I might have done this last year too

Anyway, they must have looked at my best times for the year, decided yeah this chump is no elite athlete and it won't matter if he runs or not so they let me off and I was in. They call out the heats and I had a fair idea what some of the guys around me could run. So I was disappointed when they put me in a heat that didn't have any of the guys I thought I could go with. Not to worry, I am there to run a season best anyway

They call heat's 1 and 2 onto the track some 10 minutes after the event was supposed to start at 7:55 pm. they are walking to the start line when the heavens open up and we have very heavy rain for about fifteen minutes. It clears up and it looks like we are getting ready for a start around 8:30 pm. Then the heavens open up again and we get another sustained burst of heavy rain. I didn't bring my spikes as i don't like to wear them in middle distance events and I am hoping they let me race without them. Ordinarily they would, but with the wet weather they might be worried about athlete safety

In the end they called my heat out onto the track at 8:50 pm. The first heat goes off at 9:05 pm and pretty soon I am up. Luckily they don't check for spikes. Tacked onto the tail end of the field and we go through 300 in 49 seconds. Straight away I feel like I am really pushing but still feeling okay. there is water sploshing around everywhere and my undies are soaked in the first lap which made things pretty uncomfortable

The second lap I went through in 71 seconds with 2:00 on the clock. This is my fastest start for the year and things are looking promising ahead of the horror third lap that I generally throw in. At this point there is a group of three of us at the back and we are swapping positions through each lap. One of the guys was from St Kevins or Eureka and didn't recognise which club the other guys was from - maybe glenhuntly?

The third lap I was really beginning to hurt and looking forward to getting onto the last lap. The guy from St Kevinbs has gone past me on this lap and there is quite some distance between us and the next pack. Going through the bell, there is 3:14 on the clock (for a 74 second lap) and I was pretty happy with that. I remember thinking I am on for a season best here - perhaps 3:25 or 3:26

Perhaps I was thinking about that too much and not concentrating on pushing really hard for the last 400. I was out on my own at this point and coming round the bend I could see 4:14 on the clock. Really tried to push the last 100 but was gutted to see 4:28 or something as I neared the fnish and pulled to record 4:30.51. Shameful performance. I was wrecked afterwards and pretty depressed about it. Still am. That 300 on the last lap, well that was at about my 3000 metre pace, not mile pace, not what I should be serving up for a championship event. very slow ten minute warm down afterwards

Anways, I consoled myself with food on the way home. I thought about getting stuck in to a cheap and nasty red but thought I better be good to myself plus I want to get to bed early. So I had two potato cakes instead. And a sandwich. And a foccaccia roll. the scales tomorrow will be interesting

TOTAL DISTANCE = about 5 kilometres including warm up and down