Melbourne flights booked and hilly 34k in 3.53 logged

Saturday 12th September 2009;
Ran approx. 34km in 3hrs 53min 12secs HR-135
With hills group starting in Darlington, ran first 20min with some fastish runners I didnt know, then backed off a bit, eventually settled in with Di and Jo (who is also doing Melbourne Marathon and likely to be in my targeted range of 3.30-4.00) on pipeline trail near Mundaring Weir, about 3 or 4 ankle deep creek crossings (Helena River) (squelch,squelch,squelch), and a lot of big puddles on the hilly trails,on the hills I was finding it hard to stay with Joanne, but thats good as it was taking me well out of my comfort zone early on...then through Fred Jacoby Park, up the hill for a long while, where I ended up throwing in a few 20 second walk breaks,(hammy was tender but behaved itself ok) and was on my own as Jo and some bloke in an orange top got out of my sight...then along the Munda Biddi trail to Mundaring....Felt like my first 100-120min was pretty good speed on tough elevation changes...and the big climb out of the valley near Mundaring Weir, I plodded mostly...

Got to Mundaring (about 24km of mostly hills)in 2hrs 38min and had drunk most of the 600ml powerade and 300ml water I had taken with me...saw Nev there who kindly offered me a GU, which gave me a lift for the last 9-10km back to Darlington. A bit of a hard slog at about 7min a K although I did take the luxury of a few stops to get gravel out of my shoes...from there even though it was the nice slightly downhill trail mostly, went through 27km in about 3hrs 5min, and 30km would have been about 3hrs 27min...Finished in 3.53.12 which is 30 seconds slower than what I did for this course back in June 2007...but I think I worked harder in the first 15k this time around maybe.

Pretty pleased with that, as that puts in place a backup long run after the City 2 Surf Marathon 2 weeks ago, and should see me pretty much ready for a good chance of a sub 4hr in Melbourne...

Relaxed afterwards at the bakery with Nev,Di, Jane, Richard, ironman Alice?, and others...
Was good chatting about various stuff...Jane and Richard are back for the Melbourne Marathon again too, so along with Clown, meter reader Matt, and BigKev, Joanne, Coolrunners Serena and LouB, there are a few of us West Aussies doing the Melbourne Marathon which is nice. Nice to see Slingrunner, Sugar? and a few others are doing the Half in Melbourne too...should be a large contingent of us from the wild west in it again this year...

Sitting there at the bakery a Bandicoot was rustling around under out feet looking for food scraps and one of the magpies stole a piece of toast off Di's plate, I felt its wings brush my head as it made its getaway.... Also we had a stack of 28 parrots flying around amongst us, so a nice spot although the cold windchill eventually got to us all...
And I headed off to get onto my meter reading, and put in another 3-4 hours of walking around the streets reading meters, plus jammed in a visit to the Perth Christian mens convention for 30min, so after 135km of driving my tired old car, I was pretty weary that night, and asleep on the couch by 2115hrs...


WEEK 6 (of 10) (07/09/09-13/09/09);
Volume;258min. Sessions; 2 Best RHR; 42!!
Sleep;46.75 (6.67 per night) *00 MR-26hrs

OD/LSD sessions;Very hilly 34km
Short/Medium runs;
-Ran 5,000m 24min 46 (Tuesday)
Reps sessions;
-
Comments;
The Sub 4hr looks a real possibility now that I have both the City to Surf Marathon (42km) and a 34km long runs logged, plus a 3hrs run/walk a few weeks ago and a 2hrs 25min run last week also. Probably need 1 or 2 more 2-3hr long runs to consolidate, but the big two long runs I wanted are done. Repswise we are looking a bit thin with some good quality mile reps and 800's done, which should see me in good condition for 1-4km, but my ability to sustain sub 4.30 per k for 8k-15k or more is not looking the best at the moment, and the 15k-30k area is a real concern...I think there is still time to address these areas, but I need some 15k-25k time trials or tempo runs, and some 10-16k reps sessions to push home the advantage. I bumped up the meter reading hours this week at work sufficiently to hopefully start seeing me going under 80kg if I can maintain that in the coming weeks...so its starting to look promising...
so just need to work on the reps and medium length runs, plus maybe try the Yasso 800's if I can find a decent track and a big enough time block to do them...I'd be aiming at 3.20-3.25's or better I think, although I would be happy to aim for a sub 3min one on the first rep, and maybe a few after that...I really am very keen to smash that 3.55 PB, its been 6 years and maybe, just maybe it will all go according to plan in the next 4 weeks...Its starting to look like we have a decent shot at it again this time...

Booked Melbourne flights and accomodation on Friday, and despite lots of searching for cheap flights, was only able to get the 3 of us over there and back at about $400 a head (Jacob is 2 years old now so he cant fly for free this time), which means a large chunk of my tax refund bonanza is used up on the flights, if only I had got my return in earlier, maybe we could have got cheaper flights...My wife Kathryn is entered in the 5km walk, so we can try and make it into a bit of a family holiday, and hopefully the extra money spent will be worth it...

Tuesday 8th September 2009;
Ran 5,000m in 24min 46 HR 165 at Gerry Archer track (4.57 per K pace) in Belmont.
Was working on metering nearby so decided to go check out this track see how the sand on the track was going.
The lane markings were reasonably well visible even in the twilight, and the sand on the track (presumably to raise the height of the grass and encourage good drainage)seems to have firmed up a bit, but reckon it was still slowing me up a bit.
Started off planning to do reps, and my first 200m was 36seconds which is good, but when I hit 400m in 1.28 I knew I was going to struggle, so aborted the reps plans and decided to do a 5,000m tempo-ish type run instead, as it was obvious the sandy track was slowing me up too much. 1k splits were 4.25/5.30/4.54/5.10/4.47

So a good run to kick off the week getting some more practice at running around that 5min per K mark...Although I really want to be working towards 4min-4.30 per k...or quicker...I need to average under 5.30 per K in the Melbourne Marathon to do a big PB...
Didnt sprint finish as I was a bit disappointed with the time, I guess the soft sand can only make me stronger though...