Monday - rest day.
Tuesday - intervals, ran 6*500m intervals at 4.28 min/k pace at Rat Park. Pink sky just before sunrise and a cool morning with dropping humidity. It was perfect conditions for running. I took my shoes off when I reached the park. Such a delicious and refreshing feeling to feel the dewy grass on my bare feet. Miraculously Achilles pain disappeared when I ran without shoes. Felt so refreshed and bouncy. A great session which left me feeling high for the rest of the day.
Wednesday - easy. After such a good run yesterday I had intended to do another interval session which was scheduled for Thursday, a 4*1km interval. But as I started out out I realise it was a mistake to do back to back intervals. Just to be safe, as I have do a blood test to do on Thursday which is not confounded by running and I have Coastrek on Friday. After the warm up I ran 2*1km intervals at an easy pace on a grassy oval at Mosman in barefeet. Beautiful views of Eastern suburbs and the city in the distance. Not sure if I am being sensible or lazy.
Thursday - rest day.
Friday - walk, Coastrek, a 55km walk from Coogee Beach to Balmoral. For many reasons, I have been nervous about this event. Uncertainty about my fitness and that of a member of the team made me wonder if I had maybe overcommitted myself too many events too close together. I was awake at 3.30 and left home at 4.15 to park the car at Kirribilli, from where I was picked up by the rest of the team at 5am. Race started in the dark at Coogee Beach at 6.00am.
It struck me how busy Coogee is at this early hour. There were several large fitness groups at the Northern end doing sprinting drills and other exercises, while hundreds of eager walker/runners were nervously waiting for the starters gun. And before too long we were off across the sand. I love running in the dark and found myself floating effortlessly across the sand.
It did not take long for the running teams to take off and for the rest of us to spread out. We did not experience any crowding at all and pretty much ran/walked according to our own rhythm for the whole event. Brilliant to see the sunrise over Tamarama and Bondi and I so wished I could have stopped for longer to take in the view and compose a better photograph.
Cool breeze and shade for much of the early sections, contributed to very pleasant running conditions. Apart form one of our team members falling over at Watsons Bay and suffering calf cramps, we really had no issues.
We had a great boost in moral when we made the Harbour Bridge and felt that we were on the home stretch. This was also the section of the course I had walked earlier so was familiar with what was ahead. The last 20km were blissful for me. I felt that I could have run a lot more of the trail than we did, but that was OK. We finished in 7hrs 28minutes and were 7th team overall. Pretty happy with that result.
Saturday - rest day, hosting lunch for my sisters 60th birthday and popping blisters.
Sunday - easy 10km around Narrabeen Lake. Felt great to get out for a run early. Easy run with a 'fast' finish to test the legs. All good. Spent the rest of the day packing race packs for next weekends race.
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