The Horrie and Belinda Show

27/11/06

I had an hour on the program today so headed out on my 12.4km loop with the aim of keeping it under 62 minutes with an average of 5 min/km. Legs felt a bit heavy after Sunday's run to begin with but by 4km had settled into the rhythm of 5 minute kms. Somehow between 5km and 9km I upped the pace without even realising it and was now on target to finish in under an hour. I kept the pace consistent to the end and got home with about 10 seconds to spare.

28/11/06

Belinda and I headed to SWEAT this morning knowing we were in for a hot session. The forecast was for a high of 40 with a total fire ban. I had 6x800s on the menu whilst Belinda had 6x400s. As we are still not allowed on the oval, we ran them on our 1km fartlek course. We misunderstood where Sean told us to start from and ran the first one closer to 700m. This was confirmed by the split of 2:43. Now I know I am running well at the moment but not that well. We moved back to the correct mark for the second and the split of 3:01 was more like it. With the high humidity we were finding the going very tough and on the 3rd rep I was very surprised to go past Blue Dog half way through but was happy to finish it in 3:02. I now realised that I had to drink in between reps and as we were going straight into the next rep as soon as we jogged back to our mark, this was becoming harder. I went on ahead and got my bottle and had a couple of mouthfuls before Sean was starting us off again. This caused me to run this one about 30m short while a couple did not make the start and decided to sit this one out. I was happy to finish the shortened rep in 2:58 but was now drenched with sweat. The air was getting more suffocating and the efforts were getting harder. I again managed to go past Blue Dog at the same point as the 3rd rep and it was apparent that GNW was catching up with him. I was happy to only lose a couple of seconds to finish this rep in 3:05. I was really feeling the pinch now and had to go for a quick leak before the final rep. This caused me to miss the start by a few seconds. I spent the next 500m catching the back markers and was surprised how long it took me to catch them. I had nothing left and was not too disappointed to finish in 3:10. I was just so relieved it was over. The conditions made this a tough session to begin with but the short recoveries between each rep made it that much tougher. I know it is all good and that there are no short cuts to improved fitness.

Belinda did well and finished all 6 reps with the times being a lot quicker than what she expected. Although she also slowed down on the last couple, which was expected in these conditions.