Last week's training was a pretty good combination of speed and distance.
Mon 18th April: A reasonably steady 16km run around the beaches and Mroubra / Kensington and back up Alison Rd home. Felt comfortable and averaged 4:20's.
Tue 19th April: HuRTs 3min gate to gate efforts at the Opera house. The full session is 14x3mins which is just a very long session even if you're training for a marathon. I think Renee was the only one today to do all 14. The idea originally is to run these at 80-85% pace so you can get through them all. Recovery is just 1min standing. I decided to do 10 efforts but at a faster clip (approx. 3:10 pace). Crossy was covering me and leading some for the whole session as we kept the pace up helped by Darren Moyle. But the wheels whilst not quite falling off, started to go flat and unbeknown to one another for a few minutes, Crossy and I both pulled up stumps at 8 reps. The session definitely served it's purpose but I was reminded that perhaps my legs are not quite 100% yet. Total 15km
Wed 20th April: Ok so as a BDM, I'm often in many different locations and today saw me down the Northern Beaches and as such I decided to check out the Narrabeen Lake loop which I still hadn't fully done since it's upgrade. In the back of my mind I was still contemplating the 100km at the GC on June 11 so I decided to set off doing laps of the lake for at least 3 but who knows maybe 5-6 if I was cruising ok (each lap is 8.5km). I made lap one in 4:10's feeling great, lap 2 again holding 4:10's so all good but then the fatigue set in a little and lap 3 started to hurt more than it should have with me fading slightly to take the average down to 4:12 for the 26km run (added 500m at the end). It proved that I was not ready to run 100k at this pace nor would I get through it at all perhaps. I have now decided to skip this year's World champs campaign (as hard as it would have been to be selected anyway) and maybe post a time after the Melbourne marathon. It's a fantastic loop down at Narrabeen if you haven't done it BTW.
Thur 21st April: Easy 5km morning run along the coast of Coogee and back. Just to stretch out before a day's driving. Headed off to Camden, Mittagong, Bowral through Kangaroo Valley and down to Ulladulla for an overnight there. I found a coastal track overlooking the ocean and a great grassed oval nearby to do some 400's. Just 8x400 in 67-68secs with off 2min cycles but I felt ok and held all 8. It's not a huge session but after driving all day, I was happy to get out 12km in total with these reps.
Ulladulla Lighthouse track
Fri 22nd April: Very sluggish 7km around the same trails and streets of Ulladulla. I think I managed to scrape under 5min km average by the end.
Sat 23rd April: Rejoov Runners Sat session which changes locations in and around Centennial Park every week. This week I devised a 2km cross country loop that took in the white fence, the middle forest section and a few ups and downs in between. Consistent tempo up to 10km. I ran 8km in 3:22's with Renaud not too far back followed by fellow Rejoov Runners Maya, Beck, Melissa, Darren and others. The spirit and fight that these guys display at every session is very inspiring and I certainly draw a lot of motivation from seeing them train. Next week we're hitting up the St. Peters Park run as our session. Sat PM: Easy 5km coastal run making it 20km for the day.
Fantastic 4th birthday party for Krew Munro with snakes and all. Thx Beck and Dylan.
Sun 24th April: Met the group (Hurts and Rejoov) at Cent Park for the long run. Eloise turned up as we all breathed out a collective sigh of "well the pace just went up 20secs per km) but all good. The first 6km is always relaxed and then the group settles into their own various paces as myself, Jeet, Mark (from NOTB), Jerome, Kev and a couple others went stride for stride with the 5/10km Rio qualifier Elzy. I felt okay as the pace lifted down under 4mins and the average down towards 4:10. I finished with 31km which is what I had calculated I needed to hit 130km for the week.
Then I went home and added it up and realised I only needed 29km. Had I known? I think I would have stopped at 30km.
Total for the week: 132km
Sunday night, we met the HuRTs, Run With Sole and Rejoov Running guys and girls for a drink at the Belevue Hotel Paddington to cheer on the London Marathoners. Our own Barts, Tom, Macca and Sam were to take part but alas Tom was a non starter due to an illness. A lot of training goes into marathons. Much more than any other races in my book. And to fly across the planet to race has it's risks. I caught Gastro 4 days before Berlin a couple of years back but when it goes right, it is a truly memorable occasion. And this is what happened for Barts (John Bartlett) who kept an even and smart pace throughout the whole race and finished with an impressive 2:29:18 just 27secs quicker than my own PB of many years back. Along with Hoey's recent 2:29:15 in Canberra, it has inspired me for Melbourne this year. I just need to make sure I don't get too distracted with too many other races and keep to the plan. Well done Barts. That's now two PB's you have over me (City to Surf).
A very impressive winning time from Kipchoge saw him narrowly miss the world record by 6-7secs as he started celebrating not realising how close he was - still 2:03:04 is pretty solid.
Shout out to Bruce Lambert for having an iPhone full of games for Jaden to play with. 
And besides all of that, my beer of the week is Dog Days Summer lager. Very refreshing and just the trick for every 4yr old party.
Have a great week.
CT
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