8k tempo a Nocturnal Lark and metering

One secondary definition for the word LARK is "a carefree spirited adventure". The Lark hill run was certainly that. However the Lark Hill sports super mega-plex is named after birds maybe. The skylark is only listed as being found in eastern australia, so perhaps the area was named after the mudlark, but perhaps it is the skylark or meadowlark, since it is a coastal area of unique wildlife and plants, pretty close to some very big salt lakes, and would be an ideal area perhaps to introduce the bird. I did a quick recon of the area a few weeks back, and think I may have seen a brown/white bird singing as it flew with great acrobatics, so maybe someone has introduced some skylarks to this area, not sure...

Did my biggest metering week for the year so far and worked 6 days, so between that and trying to get my car dramas sorted its been an extremely busy week. Still managed a resting heart rate of 38 at the beginning of the week, so holding onto some fitness, but things are certainly slipping a bit, so need to get car dramas settled and start finding some training time again as I feel I lost momentum this week a little.

The 8km tempo run on Thursday was a very good run, but I had a diabolical day at work on Friday with nearly 8 hours of walking around dealing with very hard to get meters, a pitbull and a lot of electric fences part of the days challenges. By the end, I had a significant gluteal strain or some sort of hopefully minor injury that seemed to disappear after an hour or so, but was very painful at the time, but most of all I was just too worn out to race the 5000m on track on the Friday night that I had planned to. Besides I feel I need to train up to a higher level before I go down to AthsWA to get thrashed. But I have registered, and when the body is ready I will head down there for some white-hot intensity racing (will still get thrashed/lapped a lot, but at least I will hopefully be ready to start working on attacking my PB's in earnest. In particular the soft 21.49 5000m and soft 43.49 10,000m. The 11.11 3000m, 4.52 1500m, and 2.16 800m will take a lot of work to get even close to...

Saturday 2320-0120 Sunday;
Got there too late to really put in much time at Lark Hill, and the Nocturnal running in prime Tiger Snake territory, was mentally a bit hard to get psyched into, but I prayed a lot, and put in 4 laps to give Dave K a bit of company on the last 6km as he almost clocked up 70km for the night!
So 12km on the course, and probably another 3-5km of jogging around the general area= about 17km with a few stops along the way in 2hrs 4 min so that almost qualifies as a long run sorta/kinda...Habitat of the Western Ringtail Possum....predator is the red fox....A good nights running, excellent course setup from Dave K, and nice to see about half a dozen intrepid souls came out and supported Daves ultra quest, with a few hours on this awesome piece of trail. AP probably the best, and made Dave earn the win for at least 3-4 hours. Suzys effort to knock off 33k, along with Nathan, BBC, Talia, Bel, and Brett all deserve a mention. So all in all at least 9 of us had a run on the course. Rob D. was there too.

Thursday;
8km in 40min 06 secs (4k splits; 20.33/19.33) HR 171 at end. 5.00min per K.
1k splits;
First 4k; 4.33 (downhill)/ 2 x approximately 5.37 (big uphill climb taking it easy and unsure of 2k point)/4.46 (on flat rd)
Last 4k; 4.36 (on flat rd)/ 2 x approximately 5.12 (mostly downhill, trying to step it up a bit)/ 4.33 (uphill, working hard)
Whats going on, I negative splitted, it must be a full moon, I don’t do negative splits do I????! Guess it must be a tempo run then…hahaha.
Seriously a good solid run to try and keep the momentum ticking over and try and get me heading in the right direction to do some serious racing this summer, instead of the try and survive until next season sort of lethargy that I have settled for in the last 2 years…Also a good de-stress after some stressful, but exciting opportunities in the last week or so that I have explored especially after the damage to my car the other week… About 80% humidity = a lot of sweating going on...

Overall a reasonable maintenance week with the 2 sessions done, in a week I concentrated on work a lot, but hope to step things up a notch in the next 2-3 weeks, as I pursue twin goals of 1. getting ready for some track racing, and 2. putting in place a possible assault on my 6 inch PB of 6hrs 16min if the body is up for it.