The Horrie and Belinda Show

8/4/07

I had 2 hours on the program today so I decided to head down to Maroubra and run along the coast to Bronte and back home. Total distance for this run is a touch over 24km with a few hills along the way. I felt very strong on the hills and was happy to finish in a touch over 2 hours.

9/4/07

An hour on the program so I again ran my 12km figure 8 course. Again felt strong and controlled and finished the 12km in a bit under 56 and a half minutes for an average pace of 4:42/km.

10/4/07

Headed to SWEAT where the numbers were down due to Sean running an Easter camp down at Jindabyne. We had 12 Wild Walters on the menu today. This is a great session as it involves some shorter more up tempo hill work. The circuit is around 420m. Splits for today were
90, 89, 87, 88, 86, 87, 85, 85, 84, 84, 85 and 82.

11/4/07

I had another hour on the program today and decided to back it off a little with Canberra coming up on Sunday. I was very happy to finish the 12km figure 8 course in a bit over 59 minutes.

12/4/07

We had 5km of fartlek on the menu at SWEAT today. Still a lot of runners missing so only had a few greyhounds in front of me including Liz Miller (former City to Surf winner), Jenny Dallaway (Sutherland to Surf winner 2006) and Royworlds. Needless to say they started to put a bit of distance into me on each 1km circuit. I was very happy to run an evenly paced session in 19:51, which was made even better that I had nobody close to push me through the efforts.

13/4/07

Missed a scheduled half hour today due to trying to get my internet access fixed.

14/4/07

Had another half hour on the program today so I used it to try and get a gauge on the pace I needed to start pacing the 3:45 marathon bus in Canberra. It took a little getting used to but in the end I managed to hold it back a little and I know knew what 5:12/km pace felt like.

15/4/07

Had a very enjoyable day out in Canberra 2007.It started off with pacing the Marathon 3:45 bus. This went like clockwork, although a few fell off the bus from the 35km mark and onwards. Although this is to be expected, given the conditions did start to warm up around that time.

Splits were:0-10km - 52:25
10-15km - 26:13
15-20km - 25:58
Half Mara - 1:50:35
20-25km - 26:36
25-30km - 26:40
30-35km - 26:59
35-40km - 27:15
40-42.2km - 12:20
Marathon - 3:44:32

After quickly telling the volunteers that I was continuing on to do the 50km and having my balloon cut loose, I had my last gel and a waterbag and immediately started to up the tempo, passing 3 who were walking in an instant. Soon enough I was out to the footpath for the little out and back that makes up most of the extra distance. I could see a few runners in the distance as I passed Flake, Blue Dog and The Everyman who were heading for home. As I passed each runner, I felt a surge of adrenalin and was really enjoying the feeling of running so strongly after already completing the marathon. I now started to count the runners I was passing like I did on the big climb at the end of Willy 2 Billy last year. I ended up passing 18 including quite a few Cool Runners who were having great runs. Then I rejoined the Marathon course and I was getting a few comments from spectators who mustn't have realised I was doing the 50km. Passed heaps of marathon finishers in the last km to stop the clock at 4:23:38, which placed me 36th in the Ultra.

16/4/07

I had a half hour recovery run today and was surprised how good the legs felt. The knees were a little achey when I started but this went away once some blood started flowing through them in the first km. Ended up running a little over 6km at sub 5 minute kms. As I said, very surprising but a pleasant one.