The Horrie and Belinda Show

24/9/06

With the body still not back to 100%, I decided to cruise around the half today with Eagle and Aunty K. As Eagle is on the comeback trail after a stress fracture and Aunty K was backing up after a 130km bike ride yesterday, the pace was very comfortable. The aim of the run was to pick a pace and then run even splits, with the last 5km being at least as quick as the first 5km. So after reaching the 2.5km drink station in 13 minutes, we were comfortable cruising at around 5:12/km pace. It was great seeing the leading runners heading back after the turnaround and we were really enjoying some banter and having a great laugh at times. We first saw Colin on the first of many Groundhog Day situations at one of the drink stations. He would keep popping up at different parts of the course, talking to all the volunteers and making sure they were happy. We reached 5km somewhere between 25:30 and 26 minutes and just kept the legs ticking over. We were joined by a few runners from behind as we headed down towards the 7.5km drink station. I joked with Eagle that either we must be slowing or they must be speeding up. We knew it was the latter as we just kept chugging along at the same pace. We reached 10km in 51:37 and then just settled into the big climb at the turnaround. As we approached the top of the hill, we saw a guy up ahead walking and then we started trying to guess where we would catch him. Eagle thought we might catch him on the hill heading up to the 18km mark but it soon became apparent that we would catch him way before that, probably before the drink station at around the 13km mark. It ended up being way before that as he obviously started off way too fast and he was bracing himself for a long and slow run home. We then turned our sights on one of the guys who overtook us at around the 7km mark and started guessing when we would catch him. However, this was going to take more effort as he always seemed to stay 200m in front of us. We started seeing the quicker runners coming back and this was a lot of fun and gave us a few more laughs. Aunty K was starting to worry that we hadn't seen Professor but was relieved when we did eventually see him as he had slowed after his ambitious pace at the start. Johnny Dark was closing on him and we startled Professor when we called out to JD. But his look was nothing compared to Johnny Dark's when I shouted out to Tesso that she was taking metres off him with every stride. His startled look over his shoulder was PRICELESS! We kept chugging away and Aunty K was starting to feel the effects of her huge bike ride yesterday. The guy in the Blackmores singlet still stayed around 200m in front. We were happy to reach the drink station at around the 16km mark and I just grabbed a cup and poured it over myself as it was starting to get a little warm. With around 3km to go, Eagle tried to lift the pace but Aunty K was not able to come with us so we backed off slightly but still moved it up a notch. We were starting to make inroads into the guy in front's lead and it was now down to under 100m. We went past Psychoma who was having a nice day out with Jackson in the pram and continued to chase. We reached the 20km mark with a 10km split of 51:58 so the pace of that 10km split was the same as the first 2.5km. At this point, Blackmore's singlet was now only 60m ahead and I had enough of being behind him and wanted to make sure I went past him before the finish so I opened up the stride and went past him within 200m as if he was standing still and kept that pace going to the end to reel off the last 1.1km in 4:35 to stop the clock at 1:48:11.

I was happy to finish the run with no pain and in a great mood as I really enjoyed running with 2 great runners and people. Thanks Eagle and Aunty K for the company.