The Horrie and Belinda Show

20/3/05

I decided to do the Striders STaR today as wasn't up to racing 10km or running 30km at SMC. That way, if I wasn't feeling good early, I could cut it short without the thought of DNFing as I would have felt if I went to SMC.

So I set off at 6.10 with O Runner, Spud and Mr Cool Running himself Kevin Tiller at a nice leisurely pace. We rolled through the first 6km at 5:40 per km pace which felt really comfortable, just chatting about 6 Foot Track and Friday night's CR drinks and the funny stories that went with it. We upped the pace to 5:30 per km for the next 6km and all 3 had decided that 20km would be enough for them so they would be heading back when we got to a certain point. By this stage I was joined by Professor and Matt who had been running since 5.30 am with the purpose of running 35km today as their last long run before Canberra. So, as I still had company and feeling great, I decided to do the full 30km. I just had to slow slightly to accommodate them, which I didn't mind as I was just feeling really comfortable. We stopped a couple of times to let them have drink breaks and then we hit the trail section of the run, which was really technical in parts. As we are 3 weeks out from Canberra, I told them that we would walk the very technical parts as we didn't need to be rolling ankles or anything so close to Canberra. Then not long after saying that Matt rolled his ankle. So we stopped for a while to give him a chance to decide whether he could continue. He decided that he was okay and would continue. We decided to back off on the pace and I told him that if we were going too fast just to yell out for us to slow down. He managed to stay slightly behind us in places and continue through to the finish, which was a real gutsy effort, considering that he had been running for close to 3.5 hours. We finally got back on a footpath and was greeted by a nice long hill to get back onto road to the finish. I ended up doing the 30km in a couple of minutes under 3 hours which was just under 6 minutes per km. I've pulled up feeling great and am really excited about the taper period, where I will just concentrate on short sharp stuff and a few tempo runs at marathon pace.