Saturday, 9 August AV R8 - 6.2 km Road Relays

Woke up feeling sore and sorry for myself this morning. Probably should not have stayed up to fnish off that bottle of red wine while watching the Olympics Opening Ceremony. Would not have been so bad if they had not been running an hour over time. Worth staying up for though

Got a lift to Sandown with Liam Magee, and we arrived about forty minutes before race time. I was off first so wentr for a ten minute warm up and then lined up with the other boys from Division 3, including Adam Clarke from Western A's and one of the talented Toomey boys from Knox

Started off pretty solid and with a nastywind down the back straight, I sat behind a couple of runners in order to conserve a bit of energy. Pushed down the Princes Highway side and worked all the way up the front straight to find I had run 10:12 for the first 3.1 km lap. In my fatigued state I put that together to make 20:24. Yeah right! Nevertheless, that was pretty close to my track PB for a straight 3000 m track race

The second time up the back straighy was hard. The fast start really found me out and I reckon all the time I lost was in getting to the summit of that back straight into the wind. Was feeling pretty ordinary over the last two kilometres but just kept on pushing to the finish

In the end, a 10:33 second lap so a positive split by 20 seconds. Probably not flash on a 3.1 km curcuit, but still enough to record a personal best by 15 seconds and take back the record Shane Jansen stole off me last year ;0)

When I handed over we were in third place and I thought that would be as good as it would get for our team. But Liam I would find out later actually passed two Division 3 runners and when he handed over wr were in first. Alas, we dropped two spots on the third leg, the fourth leg and the last leg. The last one was Philip van Dueren's fault as we wasted 18 seconds looking for him with our fourth runner Ken Souyave waiting on the finish line with no one to tag to. That would end up costing us a place

So in the end pretty pleased with my run. Roll on Club Cross Country Championships next week

TOTAL DISTANCE : 8 kilometres including warm up and down