Saturday, 5 July 2008

Club 10 km Cross Country handicap today. Woke up feeling a bit tired and thought this would be the day I just take it easy on a club run

With the children all in different states of readiness to go, Kyle decided to come down a bit later so I ran the 2 km or so to the track. A nice warm up!

I was last off of the 10 km runners with three juniors doing the shorter 6.6 kilometre course. For some silly reason the handicapper had poor Liam Magee, returning from injury, only ten seconds in front of me. While he did finish 30 secs behind me at Sandown, this was not the right handicap to have after a bit of a layoff and he would finish about two minutes behind me

Liam stayed with me for two kilometres, but after that I was on my own until the four kilometre mark where I passed the first back marker. I wasn't feeling that great through the first lap, but started to feel a bit better as I steadily picked up runners. Felt like I had a little bit left in the tank for the third lap and tried to push it out a bit

About two kilometre out from the finish, I passed a host of runners and saw with about 750 metres to go there was only one runner in front of me. While I was able to pick up a little bit, I finished in second place by about 200 metres. In the end, I was kinda happy to place and did not really run hard to try to overtake the winner who was Ken Souyave, who has had a tough time of it with injuries and it was nice for him to win

So happy to achieve one of my stated goals for the season, but not happy with the time of 38:44 and I am going to have to run heaps better than that if I am to defend my XC Championship crown next month

A couple of beers afterwards then off home to give the children their dinner. Kylie was off at a club function tonight. The greyhounds. So i fed the children and was about to put them down when the power went out. That was at 7:00 pm. It was 9:30 pm before the power was back up again following a visit from the electrician and the power company. Only my house was affected

No run tomorrow as we celebrate baby Madeleine's first birthday party at the Moreland Hotel

TOTAL KILOMETRES : about 13 kilometres including warm up and down