The Horrie and Belinda Show

27/1/07

I decided that as I am training for Western States then I better do some hill training. Not that I haven't been but I am now deliberately including hills on all my longer runs. As I had an hour on the program today I decided to run my Coogee-Clovelly hills circuit. All up 12.4km in 68 minutes leaving me quite satisfied.

28/1/07

Today it was out to the Middle Harbour Picnic STaR which is certainly no picnic. A H4 rating from Striders and they don't come much tougher than this. I chose to do this run today as it was my first ever STaR when I joined the Striders just under 3 years ago and I knew it was a good tough workout with plenty of hills.

I headed out with a large 6.10 group of at least 15 runners which included O Runner back with us after an overseas holiday with his family. This was good as he made it very clear to people that the pace of the group was 5:30/km and if people wanted to run faster then they should wait another 10 minutes and run with the 6.20 group. I was running with a fully stocked fuel belt as I didn't want any repeat of the Dee Why debacle from 2 years ago. This made it heavy going at the beginning as bottles want to jump out of the fuel belt when they are full. After a couple of dropped bottles, I was still able to stay with the group for the first hour. As I was drinking from the bottles, they stopped bouncing around and I was now able to enjoy the run. We headed down into Middle Harbour and this was the first great view with all the harbourside homes and yachts around. Then we had to forget about the view as we had to climb a rather large hill to head up to Mosman before heading back down a massive hill to head to Balmoral Beach with a magical view opening out to Sydney Heads. It doesn't get much better than this and it is scenes like this that I enjoy so much about running. As a large number of our group were not running with any water, they veered off into a park for a water stop. I decided to head up this massive hill with the momentum I was now enjoying and decided to chase after some 6.00 runners up the hill. I soon caught them and overtook them and was soon joined by Andrew T who must have also decided to not stop for water. Either that or he was just very quick about it and the 2 of us were now heading back into Mosman. This was a nice flat stretch and we were moving along at a good clip. Then it was a turn down another decent hill before turning and heading back up another one. He asked me at this point where this hill went to and when I answered it went back to the road we turned off, he told me this didn't make sense. I laughed and told him whoever designed this course just loved the idea of including more hills. The 6.20 group caught us at this point and this relieved him that we were still on course and he decided to tack onto the back of them. I just continued on at the pace I had been running and was soon joined and then passed by Superflake. At around the 20km mark I noticed the 6.20 group had decided to stop for water so I again just ran through without stopping. The main part of the group soon caught me and went past. I managed to loosely attach myself at the back of the pack and was able to keep them in sight. Then we turned off and after yet another uphill, I was again joined by Superflake. We ran into a dead end, realising we were meant to head up some stairs. We were joined by one of the girls from the 6.10 group who noticed a path. We were again on our way up the stairs and then a path until we hit a main road again. They both stopped for water and I decided to stop with them. The girl had a quick drink and was off while Flake decided to have a longer stop. After waiting a while for him, I then realised he was taking too long so I set off after the girl. Just as well because she was trying very hard to get lost at every turn from this point until the end of the run. Then on the final uphill, she left me in her dust and I let her go, realising that she could not get lost with only about a km to go. I was once again joined by Superflake who was doing a good impersonation of a fartlek session. On the way down to the finish of the run, he mentioned that he needed to cover an extra km because he wanted to run 40km and with the 9km he did before the run started, he would do this. This suited me because I had 3 hours on the program today and had finished the STaR in 2:37 so still had over 22 minutes to run. We decided to head down the hill and not stop at the finish. Then we were confronted with a dead end so it was a turnaround and head back up the hill. 2:40 had just clicked over so I thought if I head up the hill for 10 minutes and head back down, it should bring up 3 hours. Then up I went and the legs were now starting to feel very heavy and Flake was putting distance into me effortlessly. We ran all the way up the hill until it met the main road. My clock had now hit 2:51 so I thought I would be right to just turn around and head back to the finish. Unfortunately, downhill running is quicker than uphill running and the watch now said 2:56 so I continued down the hill until the dead end again and then ran back up the hill to just beyond the finish when the watch finally hit 3 hours. This had finally ended my run, covering 32.95km at an average of 5:28/km. Headed back to the Blue Dog Hotel and enjoyed his and Bernie G's hospitality as they were the hosts for this run.