The Horrie and Belinda Show

26/8/06

We were very lucky to be greeted by still and cool conditions for a lovely trail run through the mountains. With GH on next week, I thought it would be nice to take it easy and run somewhere between 3:15 and 3:30. So I headed out at a nice easy pace, running along with Go Girl for the first km or 2. But when the hills started, I found myself going down them quickly. Something to do with my weight and gravity. I concentrated on technique when running the uphills so I started to overtake a few people at this stage. Then when we hit the short sharp steep hills, I backed off and decided to walk them. Around the 10km mark, a couple of the leading women runners went past and it seemed like deja vu as they were the same women who went past me at King of the Mountain. I found myself swapping places with a few runners around this point as I would fly down the steep downhills and then they would go past me on the flats or uphills as I would back off at these points. I hit drink station 3, which is the 15.5km mark in 80:XX, about 3 minutes slower than 2 years ago. As I ran a 3:05 2 years ago, I put myself at around about 3:10 pace. So after this drink station I walked while I ate a muesli bar and had a drink. About 5 runners went past me at this point. Not long after this, the course hits a road for a couple of kms so I just settled into a nice rhythm and was happy to let the runners ahead build a lead on me as I was not racing. I reached the 21.5km mark which signals the 7km downhill feeling good and I was happy to keep rolling along, happy to let those runners ahead build a bigger lead. I overtook one woman on the downhill as she seemed to be struggling at that point. Just before the bottom, Stephen Kibble, a fellow strider passed me and he started to open up a bit of a gap on me. As we stopped at the drink station at the bridge to signal the beginning of the 6km uphill, I mentioned to him that the nice easy downhill was over and it was now time to work a bit harder while we started to make the long climb. I settled into a nice steady rhythm behind him and just concentrated on my uphill running form which we practice at SWEAT. Before I had even realised, I had overtaken him and started to notice runners up ahead who were now walking. So I decided to start counting as I overtook each person. Within 15 minutes I had overtaken 6 but then found myself with no more in sight. So I just dug in and kept rolling along, knowing if I held my form I would soon see some more runners ahead. Sure enough about a km from the top of the climb I saw O Runner and a couple of others so all of a sudden I found that I had an extra spring in my step and went past them pretty quickly. Then after a quick drink at the top of the climb, I managed to go past another 3 taking my total to 12. The top of the climb now signals about a 1.5km run to the finish along the side of the road. I could now see quite a few ahead who were clearly struggling so I decided to see how many more I could overtake from here to the finish. I then managed to overtake another 6 along this section to take the number I had overtaken since the bridge to 18. This left me with a very contented feeling at the finish as I had finished strongly feeling great and managed a 4 second PB by my watch from my time 2 years ago to again manage to run 3:05.

This run was just the confidence booster I needed before Glasshouse next week.