The Horrie and Belinda Show

19/12/05

As we didn't do a long run on the weekend, I headed out for 10.5km on my own. I ran it fairly solidly, buoyed by a good run at SMC the day before.

20/12/05

I took Belinda back for some more hill reps. Once again, she ran them very consistently with 6 seconds separating the quickest from the slowest.

21/12/05

We decided to go a bit longer today and ran 12.6km. Belinda was still feeling yesterday's hill session so the pace was a bit slower today.

22/12/05

Belinda chose to rest today so I headed out for 10.5km on my own. It was quite warm so the pace was a bit slower than Monday. I found it very soothing just to plod along on my own.

23/12/05

As we were heading to Quarry Rd the next day, we opted for an easy 7.5km. We ran it very comfortably and finished strongly.

24/12/05

The day had finally arrived for the Quarry Rd run I organised on Cool Running. I was happy to see that there ended up being 30+ runners out there. Belinda and I started out with BennyR and Dash Incredible. Belinda started to fall behind on some of the big climbs so I headed back for her and told Dash and BennyR to go ahead. They saw us just before the Quarry Rd turnaround and agreed to wait for us. A quick pit stop at the turnaround topping up water supplies thanks to Spud and we were off again. We joined up with Dash and BennyR again and ran most of the way with them until the big climbs between the creek and the Stewart Ave end. When we arrived back, quite a few who decided to run 1 lap were still milling around drinking the coke and water we brought. Dash and Benny decided that 1 lap was enough so Dash brought out a watermelon and cut this up and everybody had a nice scoff of that. Belinda had some watermelon and a drink, topped up her water, popped a gu and we were off for our second lap with Bernie G and Psychoma. After sitting down drinking a beer a minute before, Blue Dog also decided to join the fun. We headed off ahead of the girls but were still running easily. Blue Dog ran all the climbs and pulled away from me on these as I decided to walk them. I caught up with him at the Quarry Rd end where we topped up our water supplies. We were heading back when he realised he didn't have his key with him. After a few anxious moments, Bernie turned up with Psychoma and asked him if the key she was showing him was his. I checked with the girls on Belinda's whereabouts and they told me she was still ploughing on so I headed ahead and was happy to see her still having a go. So I decided to head back around with her and head back to Quarry Rd where we finished off the water supplies by topping up our bottles and tipping the rest over ourselves. It sure was refreshing. I told her that we were going to try and run most of the way back to the creek, which she almost managed to do. We had an anxious moment when I got confused and tried to take us on a road to Galston Gorge. Luckily, I listened to she who knows best and we were back on track. We finally got back to Stewart Avenue and it had taken us 3:55 for Belinda to run 26km and me to run 28km. She was feeling quite bashed up mentally as it was hard work on that course in the oppressive heat and running a part of it on her own. But when I assured her that the pace was good enough to keep her ahead of the sweeper at 6 Foot, this put a huge smile on her face. Now she can't wait to get back to Quarry Rd where we will run 1 lap as our midweek long run for the next couple of weeks.