Sunday, 16 March - Pro Meet (St Bernards)

The mercury was due to top 40 degrees today, not unlike the last three St Bernards pro meets. Something about this time of year. Better make sure I drink plenty of water! An odd diatance today with the race to be 2000 metres. I was running off 220 metres

For the second night running, got woken by various children at 1:00 am and 6:00 am. My flu-ridden partner was none too happy to be asked to settle the baby at 6:30 am!

Got up to give the children their breakfast, put some washing in the machine and then settled in for some quality Star Trek viewing. Had the children wake up Kylie at 10:00 am. Watched a little more television then put middle child down for a sleep and went to hang out washing which took me an hour in the lovely hot sun. Kylie wasn't going to drive me on account of the heat, which was cool as I had scoped out the bus-train-bus combination I would need use to get to St Bernard's College

Was in a bit of a rush to get ready to leave and forgot to pack my Tancredi stable t-shirt. For some reason my four year old son Hamish wanted me to wear a red t-shirt today. Got on the bus at 3:00 pm, arrived at Glenroy station to find my train to Essendon had been cancelled. That meant I would miss the 4:00 pm bus and would have to catch a later bus. Luckily there are two that service the area around St Bernards. Finally got there around 4:20 pm after a nervous bus trip trying to remember the streets on the map so I would know where to get off - and had only 45 minutes to race time

Did a 12 minute warm up and was ready for my 2,000 metre race. Lined up before going out to my mark and the starter says there will be no penalty for Stawell if we wanted to pull out. Wish I had known that before making the trek out there

There are a heap of scratchings so that by the time the field goes out to their marks, there are only about a dozen in the race. Wasn't sure this was good or bad? I kept looking out over the field to see where the frontmarkers were and I how much ground I had to make up to catch them. Rather surprisingly, I was one of the frontmarkers. Only about four runners in front of me

Started off well and with four laps to go, I had moved into third. Managed to catch all but one of the front markers on the second full lap and positioned myself behind the leader. I didn't want to push hard too early, particularly with a howling hot northerly on one of the long sides of the course (the finish line was on one of the bends).

I kind of felt sorry for the leader as I was using him pretty well and conserving a lot of energy. At the same time it was pretty exciting listening to the commentator say how easy running I was looking. At the bell lap things sarted to go up a notch and you could feel the change in the vibe and the tempo of the race. At this point we had been joined by one of the backmarkers. I let him go with about 300 metres to go, not prepared to time my run too early.

I kicked with 200 metres to go and held strong all the way through to notch up my second runner up placing in a row! Awesome!! The guy who won I was never likely to catch. A far superior runner who had started off 75 metres! Yikes!! I don't think I would have been able to sustain a 300 metre kick in that heat. I picked up $130 for my effort and managed to make it into a photo this time where they properly rewarded the placegetters with a photo, unlike Bendigo

The effort was soured a little bit when I worked out that it would only haave been good enough for 4:39 as an equivalent 1500 metre time. Given that I ran 1780 metres, it might be fairer to equate the time to what I have done for 2000 (6:13) and 3000 metres (9:19) - both quicker than what I have ever run for those distances. And I guess it was also 38.6 degrees when I ran

Had a really sore throat when I finished and could barely talk for the raspy sound coming out of my mouth. The sore throat did not go away and I think maybe the hot wind or hot air might have burned the back of my throat

TOTAL DISTANCE = 5 kilometres including warm up and down