C2S: 82 or thereabouts - Use the force Luke

The training for this last week has been the usual pre-race fare: two runs of about 7 or 8 K and one of about 4.5K during the week. The were all slow and steady runs and felt OK.

On Friday night I went to the aquatic centre and just churned out a slow and steady uninterrupted 1700m in the pool, which took about 50 minutes.

It's been ages since I just got out and did a slow and steady swim, and it felt great. I have to remember that the swimming is just cross training, as this type of training was spurned when I was tinkering with triathlon as not being too good for development, but the truth is that I enjoy it more than the 150m efforts I have been doing.

The girls were with ntheir Dad this weekend, but we took them to netball on Saturday morning, so Bop and I went for another slow steady run before the game started. She wasn't feeling that great, so I was quite happy to pull the pin after 2K in preparation for C2S the following day.

Now, the lees than good people at GME had decided not to send my replacement Garmin because they didn't have a HRM strap. I told them in a pointed fashion on Friday that I already had one, but this was of little use - it was all too late. DJ had started calling the Garmin Obi-Wan, and was making jokes about my inability to run without it. I decided to embrace the failure of technology and run without any timng apparatus. I would use the force.

You don't get many races that start at 9:30, so I decided to eat more breakfast than usual, and this was probably a mistake.

After dropping DJ, a few of her friends and my Dad who were walking the race together at the yellow group, I saw a small group of Coolrunning caps in the green group, so I sidled up to find Owl, Caro and Boonarga, and I had a good chat to them as the race grew near.

When the gun went we shuffled up to the start line and I lost Caro and Owl immediately. I tried to hang on too Boonarga for the first K, but he weaves through crowds better than I and I lost him. Soon after I passed Belinda on the first big hill and got a friendly hello from her.

I strugglled on at laboured breathing pace for the next few K's and the biggish breakfast started threatening an encore performance. I ignored the first couple of drink stations as I wished to avoid the traffic jam, but I did take on water at most of the stations.

I think it was alitlle after half way that I passed Belinda again (she must've sneaked past me) and I was reminded of a 10K race at SMC where we spent the entire day passing each other, and I decided that we should dead heat in the last 500m, and today turned out no different. Belinda canes the downhills and I attack the uphills, so we swapped places a few more times, but when we drew level in the run down to the finish line we stuck together for the rest of the race. We reckon we finished in a nett time of 82 minutes. Outside my target, but not dreadful. Let me state this right here - next year's target is sub 75.

I caught up with a few people after the race, but the task of meeting up with DJ, Dad and the rest of them soon took over. We're a pretty quiet house tonight. I think it's bed time. I've had a big day.