How to drag an Olympian to victory

Sun - 2hr 53 min, 36k's @ about 4:42 mins/km
Tues - 2/1/2 mins with 30 JR. 30 SR, Repeat, then 4 mins.

My momentum leading into the Gold Coast continues to build nicely. On Sunday, I was at the Ship Inn at 5:40am to commence my run. No sooner had I got out of the car, it began to rain and with the cool air, it was quite chilly. Perfect weather for keeping my competitors in bed!! A heavy cloud hung over the city as as I squinted across the river at the City, I mused that without the neon and lighting of a modern city, Brisbane would have had a distinctly Edwardian feel that morning.

A sluggish 20 minutes of running followed before I ran into Pete, David and Jonesy makine their way east from the Regatta. I joined the boys and we proceeded to do a loop out to Newstead and it wasn't long before I was feeling comfortable. The body was handling the run beautifully and I was shocked when I asked David to check his Polar for our average pace and got a response of "4:37's." It didn't feel that fast at all! After 90 minutes with the boys, I did a loop out to Orleigh Park so I could run on the Mother's Day Classic course and see how the race was unfolding. I managed to get a front row seat of the action running alone on Riverside Drive and glancing back at race leader, Olympic Steeplechaser Peter Nowill whilst he bore down on me at sub 3 min pace!! Naturally, there were a few "c'mon's" being yelled as Nowill tried to catch me (*jokes*) It was pretty cool to get an insight into how hard yet smoothly the elites were running as they whizzed past me. I must have lost concentration at that point as I ended up doing 2k's at 4:20 pace! I was stoked to finish the last 20 minutes of the run cruising at 4:40 pace and felt like I could have broken out into a sprint if I had been approaching the finishing line of the GC Marathon with the clock reading 2:59:40.

There was a little bit of trepidation this morning as my right thigh gave me some grief in the warm up - it feels like there might be a tight nerve or perhaps something caused by a tight groin. I'll be getting Shane Lemcke to have a look at it tomorrow. Anyway, I came good by the time the session started and with Glenda doing a race pace trial for her SMH Half this weekend, I took the lead from the usual suspects, Mike, Pete and David. The first two minutes felt great and I felt like I was effortlessly gliding over the ground and I proceeded to open up a gap of around 25m to a chase pack led by Mike after five minutes of fast running broken up with 30 second jogging recoveries. Alone at the pack of the back as we turned for home, I set myself the challenge of catching all the boys on the run back to the start and managed to reel most of them in to complete a very satisfying effort. Pat set us an extra two minutes out and back and although my speed was gone, I managed to stay the course and put in a reasonable effort.

Gees, I'm really champing at the bit for my next race.