Stryka’s BodyBlog

Well I stuffed it, pulled out after 5km….

 Are you kidding me, Just messing with you all Surely you should know by now that I don’t quit anything and certainly not after all the hard work in preparation.

 My Day started around 6 with a quick bite and a coffee. A check of the website shows 9 degrees c in town and a balmy 0.4 degrees celcius at the summit. Bugger that means I am going to be too hot for most of the race and freezing the last 3km. My goals today are to not walk (except past the drink stations, I am not that coordinated) and a time of 2hrs30 for a pass with a stretch target of 2hr20.

8am sees us start. I stay half way towards the back. Don’t get too excited yet there is a long way to go. Race plan is to settle in a nice rhythym until 8 1/2kms to go, drag my ass through the steepest bit until 2km and then see how I go from there.

2km in already starting to see a couple of people stop to walk, gonna be a long day for them! I am feeling good, the rain has held off as I weave through the traffic. At the 8km mark I hit the slower walkers who had an hour head start on us. I reach the turnoff from Ferntree on to the mountain road, 57minutes gone. The only other time I had run that section it took 60mins. Ahead of schedule, I still feel good just our usual sunday run to go and I am running to plan.

I then start hitting the walkers. Hit the springs at a time of 1hr24 right on schedule. starting to heat up a fair bit, why did I wear the jumper? 8 1/2 to go. On the way to the chalet the sun comes out and I am really starting to warm up. Hit the chalet at 1hr 50min. I no longer have the ability to work out if that is on track or not. 4kms to go. I can do that in half an hour surely?

Getting cold again now, glad I have my jumper, cloud has descended over us and the wind has picked up. I feel good mentally but my legs are really tightened up. Not long till I finish. Fight it all the way to the end. Is that the finish in sight. Push hard Ryan, you don’t have to worry about tommorow.

 I finish in …… 2hrs 15 minutes 40 seconds at an even faster pace than my shorter training runs! Very happy with the time.

The winner was some Kenyan bloke who ambled it in a lazy 1hr28 so that gives you some idea of where I am.

Gotta run to catch my plane now. Thankyou all to have supported my journey. I won’t be able to get on to bb.com much over the next two weeks but I will return with a new challenge. Not sure what yet.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.