The Horrie and Belinda Show

Belinda has decided to withdraw from 6 Foot this year. After a few light runs during the week, a visit to the physio confirmed that the calf is healing but it is not going to be right to run such a tough and demanding event like 6 Foot. The next month is going to be concentrated on letting the calf heal properly before embarking on some big challenges later in the year.

As for my training, I am rolling along like clockwork and am enjoying a purple patch at the moment.

14/2/07

I had 90 minutes on the program so it was down to Coogee again for my 18km course. Finished it in my best time since starting it, in just over 91 minutes.

15/2/07

10 laps of Big Bertha was on the menu today. After managing to break 19 minutes for the first time the last time we did this, I was hoping to sneak under 19 minutes again. Settled in behind Blue Dog at the beginning and went through the first lap in 1:50 feeling comfortable. I went through the next couple of laps in 1:50 as well, managing to sneak past the dog on a downhill. I continued to hit splits of 1:50 to go through halfway in 9:10. While I try not to get too far ahead of myself in this session, I was feeling pretty confident in going sub 19 again. Laps 6 and 7 were again right on 1:50. Then the unthinkable happened and I lost a second on lap 8 and then 3 seconds on lap 9 as I was starting to feel the pinch. Now I was on the last lap, I decided to dig deep and finish the strongest I could. Blue Dog had a similar idea, going past me at the bottom of the last hill to finish a couple of seconds in front of me. I managed to pick the 4 seconds I lost on laps 8 and 9 to finish in 18:20 for an even split run which gave me a great feeling. It is nice that the endurance I have built is holding me at the faster pace.

16/2/07

I had the regular half hour on the program today and managed 6.2km in the allotted time.

17/2/07

Another hour on the program so I devised a 12km figure 8 course to finish within the hour. Managed to finish the course in just over 59 minutes for another well paced run.

18/2/07

As I had Little Athletics commitments, I had to cut my long run short and ran only 14km in just under 70 minutes.

19/2/07

Another hour on the program so I ran my 12km figure 8 course again and finished it in just under the hour.

20/2/07

We had 3x2km reps on the menu today. When I ran this session a couple of years ago when training on the Pat Carroll program, I averaged 7:50 for each 2km rep. I was hoping to be able to average the same time as I feel I am in as good shape as then if not better. I finished the first rep in 7:46 feeling fairly comfortable but knew things were going to get tougher in the hot and humid conditions. The first km was again fairly comfortable but I had to work a bit harder in the 2nd km to finish the rep in 7:48. The third rep started off feeling like very hard work and after going through the first km in 3:55 could feel that things were getting quite tough. I dug in and accepted Sean's challenge of trying to catch the runners ahead of me. Ran the last km in 3:52 for a 7:47 final rep. I couldn't believe the consistency I again managed and was really chuffed with this.

21/2/07

I had a longer midweek long run on the program today of 1:45. I started off feeling quite fluent but as the humidity started to bite and sap my energy, I was happy to keep the pace under 5 mins/km and finished 21.77km in 1:46.