Saturday, 3 May - AV XCR08 Round 2

Well today was a comedy errors and no mistake!

First off, we were very late leaving because I kinda mis-judged how long it would take us to get there and dawdles throughout the morning without giving any thought to the time

The, because I had run to work yesterday some of my gear was there - including phone and running shoes so we had to stop in the city on the way through to Warragul

We get onto the South Eastern and they are doing road works, so it's 80 km/hour pretty much all the way through to near the Dandenong turn off

So we are approaching Drouin (where the run is take place, but everyone calls the race "Warragul" for some reason) and I realise I had left the directions at work. So have to get onto the blower where luckily Dan Norris is actually carrying his mobile. So he gives us awesome directions

End result - we get there with ten minutes to spare. Phew!!

The actual run was pretty much as I expected having done this in 2004 - one of my first AV winter runs. Very hard hill, which I nicknamed "Anderson Street" virtually right from the very start then a welcome little bit of downhill before you meander your way slowly uphill for about 500 metres and hit a gate, which you have to steeple.

Then a little bit more downhill and a series of ditches you have to jump over. Then a sharp uphill section which both laps i figured not try to attack it but just get the knees high and "bounce" up it. Then a welcome flat stretch before a little uphill, more flat then at the top of the course a long downhill bit before sweepting to a hard right and almost smashing ones body into some fencing. Have successfully avoided that, you run throough to the finish and repeat

I didn't feel that good from the get go and just tried to muddle my way through the race. By the end, I was just happy to get over the line and a time of 29:50 odd for the 8 km probably indicates how underwhelmed I was in my performance. When does track season start?

Afterwards a few of us went back to the clubrooms and we went out for dinner. The highlight of the day being that the unlicensed halal venue said it was okay for us to nip around to the bottle shop and scull beers at the table

TOTAL DISTANCE = about 9 kilometres including warm down