The Horrie and Belinda Show

26/1/05

What a great day to be out and about in Centennial Park this morning. Great to see so many Cool Runners out there including some I had not met before including one of our legends Lucky Legs.

Lined up at the start behind vat_man, Blue Dog and Superflake with the aim of sitting in behind them and hoping they would drag me through to as close to 32 minutes as possible. We started off conservatively which started Superflake questioning whether we doing a Striders STaR or running a race. I had to tell him to just shut up and get on with it. He took this advice as we hit the first hill and charged up it, hauling in Blue Dog in the process. They had soon opened up around a 15-20m gap on me. Pace quickened quite a bit after the first hill and we ran the next 2km at sub 4 minute pace which was aided by some nice downhill, especially in the 3rd km. Superflake remained ahead of Blue Dog and I continued to hold on, passing the 4km mark in 16:16. However, knowing that we had to do the same 4km loop again, I knew that a negative split was definitely not on the cards. This was confirmed when my pace for the 5th km was 15 seconds slower than the first km. I had now changed my goal to try and finish in under 33 minutes. When I reached 6km mark, I realised that this wasn't going to be reached either. I just went into survival mode and the tactic became just try and not let Blue Dog get any further ahead. This worked for me as the next km was a lot better, which was again aided by the downhill. Finished the last km which was again an uphill one ok and finished not too far behind Blue Dog in 33:36 with Superflake about the same distance in front of him.

Not quite the time I was hoping for but considering the toughness of the course, one that I can live with.