500's at speedwork

8 x 500 avg 1:41:5 with avg 33 secs SR, 3k WU, 3k WD

Woke up to the beautiful sight of a rainy morning - unfortunately not drought busting rain. It seems however that many of my team mates didn't agree with me with that it was a beautiful day and about a third of the Group were missing! Those absentees missed a great session with the rain abating by the time the warm up started.

Yours truly had a shocking start with my energy tank running on empty early in the reps. Despite a large bowl of porridge for breakfast, I was starving and in need of a good feed. Whilst I had a large and nutritious stir fry for dinner last night washed down with a quarter piece of Sara Lee Bavarian cheesecake, that feed only served to make up for my small lunch rather than stock up my energy stores for training. I've put a reminder in my mobile to eat a decent lunch and dinner every Monday from now on. Fortunately, I got a second wind halfway through the session and was able to finish it off nicely. We did 500's under the Story Bridge in a session that was dominated by Glenda and Slash followed by Pete and Aza with a small gap to yours truly and Jamie. Pat had said that we could choose our own recovery times and Glenda and Slash decided about 40 seconds was appropriate and naturally the rest of the A-Team took off every time they. As a result, I averaged just a 33 second standing recovery with a low of 29 seconds before the last rep. With the exception of a 1:46 effort on the seventh rep, my efforts were nice and consistent in the low 1:40's and there was a bit in the tank as I was taking care not to run too much faster than 3:30 pace. Slash finished off the session with a barnstorming last rep in the low to mid 80's, narrowly ahead of Jamie.

Naturally, Gold Coast Hill was next and Glenda and I lead the recovery back to the Hill and then gunned it all the way to the top, well ahead of most others. At the top, I asked Glenda 'do we have to do one or two?' and her wordless response was to start jogging back to the bottom of the hill and the two of us were the only ones to tackle that insansely steep hill behind All Hallows for a second time. After that, I was sucking in the big ones but managed to croak out to Glenda '4:10's back to the Ship Inn?' and the two of us then pulled away from the rest of the Group with a Marathon pace warm down back to the Ship Inn to complete a very satisfying session, particularly given my poor start. Observing my team mates, it was clear that Ally had a great session averaging around 1:54's in a PB for this session - well done Mate! Melbourne is looking good for you! Elsewhere, Tesso convincingly toweled Clairie and it was nice to see after Clairie has spend much of the year in front of Tess! Perhaps now that Clairie is a year older its a case of 'The Empire Strikes Back' and Tesso will give Clairie something to chase for a while - he he he he. No doubt Clairie will take offence to this post and we'll see some spirited duels between the dynamic duo in coming weeks!

It was lucky we didn't have a full group in one respect this morning because a construction worker stole four Up and Go's from our table at the Ship Inn when Sue had her back turned for a moment. I'm really upset I didn't get to see this! As I was telling Ally, Its always been a fantasy of mine to catch a thief trying to outrun me, make a classic tackle on him, 'accidentally' bash his head on the ground when restraining him and then make a citizen's arrest! Oh well, maybe next time.

Km's this week - 10
Km's this month - 224
Km's this year - 1088