Went to the Vic Road Runners 8k handicap race on Saturday. They gave me a handicap of 13 minutes to 'give the boys something to chase' (last group went off on 14). Went off at what I thought was a decent pace and was quite disappointed to look down and see that I was barely managing 4:00/k. It was costing me too, and I was sure I was going to be dropped by the other two guys running with me. Thankfully for my self-esteem, that didn't end up happening. When we got to the Anderson St hill, I found myself putting a lot of distance on the others and they never made up that gap. Maybe I just needed a warmup, because I sped up as the race went on. Did the first lap in 15:40ish and followed up with a 25 second negative split in the second half. I was working pretty hard up the hill the second time and thought I was definitely going to flag, but somehow managed to pull a 3:27 last km out of the hat, which was very pleasing. Finishing time was 30:55, which isn't a PB, but not too far off. Considering I basically haven't run faster than 7:00/k in about 3 months, I was very happy with that result:)
I've been settling back into life in Australia. It's nice having a bit of sun on the skin for a change, but I miss the freedom I had in Europe. Jet lag has been a bit tough. I've been feeling very fatigued despite a drastically lower training load last week (16hrs incl 51k of running). Went for a hard 150k ride on Sunday and was absolutely floored afterwards. It was fun though:) I need to get myself a decent road bike. I was riding my friend's 25 yr old clunker and putting quite a few people on Beach Rd to shame:P
Training from now on will involve quite a bit less riding (apart from a Sunday long ride) and skiing with a lot more concentration on the running side of things. I'm still building my base and won't add anything more intense than a tempo run until I get up to a 30k long run (right now it's only 10k). The pushups and pullups (just bought a pullup bar off Ebay) will see a return too.
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