Sunday - Never give a sucker an even break!

120mins - 24k's between 4:20-5:00 mins/km

'Never give a sucker an even break' - what an immortal quote and it was so apt today!!

Sucker Number 1 - Matty

I was up early to meet the large contigent that Jonesy had organised to meet at the Ship Inn at 6am. Nice work Jonesy! The plan was a two hour run out to Mt Cootha and back to the Ship Inn. Believe it or not, I've never run at Mt Cootha, let alone up it as I've been pretty conservative about doing hills the last two years. Its avoiding overstriding on the downhills that worries me, not the uphills, thank you. In excellent conditions we settled into a nice pace along Coro Drive until the 15 minute mark when I bonked due to a lack of energy. I dropped off the pace set by Langy, Aza, Pete, Slash, Jonesy and Bolty and struggled to the 20 min mark hoping that I would come good. Alas it didn't happen so I took the GU that I had with me for emergencies. Ten minutes later, the GU had worked its magic and I started to steadily reel in the boys - by now 200m ahead.

This was another frustrating episode in my problems with having a lack of energy for training. I'm cranky because I thought I had prepared well. On Saturday, I ate a whole home made pizza for lunch, skipped afternoon tea and had a large plate of Thai Red Curry with 200g of rice for dinner at 6pm. At 7pm, I had a large plate of salad and a hard boiled egg followed by a piece of custard danish. An hour later, I had some liquorice allsorts. Go figure! Fortunately, I've never had this problem in a race, perhaps because I carbo load for all races and as such I'm seriously thinking of carbo loading on Monday's and Saturday's prior to my key sessions the next day.

Back to the run - I caught up to the boys at the foot of Mt Cootha and sailed up the bitumen to a park where we pulled over for a quick drinks break. At this point, Langy and Jonesy both turned for home and there was a surprise on the menu for me - a run up something called the Powerful Owl trail to Channel 9. I had not run trails and had minimised my offroad running for the past two years but with the shin problems a fading memory, I figured today was as good as any to test them out. It was probably only going to take a few minutes anyway. The trail was steep but I was feeling strong at this point and smoothly ascended my way up. Shortly, I took a closer look at where we were going and the climb seemed to stretch into infinity!! Two minutes into the merciless climb, I was sucking in the big ones and watching the mountain goat known as Pete sail scamper away from me with Slash and Bolty in close attendance. By the time I crested the rise after about three minutes, the boys had dropped me. Taking care not to overstride on the downhill that followed, I gritted my teeth and tackled the next ascent. After about 10 minutes on the trail, of which about 7 minutes was spent ascending, I arrived at Channel 9, hurting but much wiser for the experience. I'm rarely passed on Gold Coast Hill at speedwork and consider myself a better than average hill runner, but this was definitely a learning experience. I was later to find out that Langy and Jonesy were pissing themselves laughing after they left the group with Langy commenting to Jonesy 'Poor fool Matty doesn't know what he's got himself into!'

Fortunately, I recovered rapidly and now back on the bitumen, I tried to salvage some wounded pride by setting a brisk pace up front as we headed back. I needed to borrow some money from Pete to by an emergency Mars Bar from a servo at the foot of the mountain, but otherwise, I ran a good tempo all the way back to the Ship Inn and finished a satisfied man.

Sucker Number 2 - Melbourne Storm

In hindsight, I'm sure the Storm would have preferred that they not start favourites in the Grand Final. That's a fair weight of expectation when you're up against the mighty Broncos who were undefeated in five trips to the big dance. I was close to going down to Sydney for the game but the logistics got too difficult. I started the arvo with my good mates, Big Fella and RooBoy at my place and then we proceeded to Andy's place along the banks of the Breakfast Creek. We worked up a thirst with a game of touch footy at Allan Border Field and tucked into a BBQ before settling down in front of the tv. After 79 minutes of unbearable tension, the premeirship was ours and as you can imagine, the boys and I were pretty jubilant!


Km's this week - 64
Km's this month - 24
Km's this year - 1338