Friday, August 19, 2011

A Tree Change

Well the time has come to say goodbye to the urban jungle of Belfield and to say hello to the new residency in Woodford in the Blue Mountains. Only a week to go now before the Boss and I move into our new home. We are both really looking forward to the change. The Boss has been pushing for this change for years and to be honest I don't know why we didn't do it earlier.

So what this means for my running? I think that I'm definitely going to be concentrating solely on trail and mountain running. I just can't see myself wanting to pound pavement when I have the great Aussie bush literally at my backdoor. I don't think I'm going to be racing half as much either, although I have done a rough count of the amount of races in the Western Sydney/Blue Mountains and there is no shortage! When you factor in the Running Wild races, TNF100, 6 Foot, Willy 2 Billy, Woodford 2 Glenbrook (my local race!) and all the SMC races I think I have enough races to keep the competitive juices flowing!

There is no shortage of training partners either. I'm very lucky to have a solid group of runners already up there that I'm already friends with. How's this for a bloody great bunch of athletes...Ben Artup, Earl and Ed O'Brien, Andy Lee, Wayne Bulloch, Mick Donges, Ewan Horsbough, Jo Parsons, Jim Perrett, Ben Berriman, Terry Meehan...plus a whole bunch more I haven't met yet.

Yes, I think this will be a great move!

Monday, August 15, 2011

A nice farewell

The least said about the C2S run yesterday the better. No PB and very soft running on my part, I didn't push hard enough when I should have and when you take it easy, mediocre results follow.

On a more positive note, I enjoyed a little farewell get together with some other Woodstockers at Mark's Park. Many beers were consumed! Thanks to Marty for organising and all the people that came along. I really hope to still come along to training runs every now and then. Perhaps if I had done so more regularly this year I could have run quicker yesterday too!

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Commonwealth Champs Course

Here is the course for the Commonwealth Ultra Distance Trail Running Championships in Wales that I have been selected for. It is in September. Friend and No Roads and now Australian teammate Mick Donges found this and shared it with me. My initial thoughts were 'they call this a trail running course???'. You would think that from the land of the fells they would include some climbs but I guess they didn't want to cross over on the Mountain Running side of things too much as that is another separate component of the championships. The more I look at it though, the more I think this type of course is more suited for me. It's 5 loops of this course to make it 55km in total.

I am very honoured to be selected. This will be the third time I've represented Australia, in three different disciplines; ultra road running, mountain running and now trail running. I have the added honour of being named captain of the trail running team.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

C2S Taper

I've decided I'm going to give C2S a red hot go on Sunday, and thus have decided a short taper is the go. So no runs over 15km this week, and focusing more on speed in training. I may even have Saturday off! I think this will be one of the last chances to run a PB. I don't see myself getting up at sparrows fart and making my way from Woodford to the city next year. I would really like to take a minute off my time, but the course has always been one I've raced poorly. So this year I'm going to go in with a slightly different strategy and we shall see how that goes.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

My rules, my PB!

Headed down to the Bay this morning to run in the Bay Run Fun Run. Last time I ran this event was probably 4 years ago, not long after I started to take running seriously again. Ever since then it seems to have clashed with the M7 or some other more worthy event. Part of the reason I entered was also because I was part of one of the three Woodstock teams, and as the teams organiser, there was no way I couldn't go.

With just some of the fellow Woodies that made it
down to the Bay this morning.
I wasn't expecting great things today, and I'm glad to say I lived up to my predictions. Although the title of the post indicates otherwise, there are some asterisks that go in the fine print! My previous Bay Run PB was just under 24 minutes set at a Woodstock Handicap almost a year to the day ago, but on the 'old' Bay Run course. Me thinks the new bridge has made the course a bit faster and a bit shorter. Of course more evidence of this was seen today; both male and female course records were broken.

I've never been one to be precious about 'certified measured courses' and such rubbish when listing PBs. If it says it's 7km on the event website, that's good enough for me (and it does). At least they're not putting it in the name...case in point GNW100s aren't 100 miles or kilometres I recently found out. So I'll take what I can get, after all, with all the long stuff I've done this year, it's a miracle I have any fast twitch left!

The team? Well Barney, Dawlo, Chaia and I finished 4th behind two very good school teams from Trinity (Brad Woods is the teacher there) and a team that call themselves the '4 Jokers'! The other Woodstock teams came 11th and 22nd.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Year of the 100k

I have entered the Great North Walk 100k event, my third 100ker of the year (counting Kokoda). It's an event I've ever really given much thought too, but since my Woodstock buddy and friend Phil did the 100ker last year, there has been a growing curiosity. This was deepened listening to the glowing reports from Kokoda teammate Clarke, who also happens to have the unofficial 100k course record and has won this event the last two years. Clarke is looking to finally pen his name into the record book this year, and the way he is running, he will no doubt do just that.

From all reports, this event is very very tough (imagine what the 100 miler is like). Both the elevation and terrain are testing, but also, and quite possibly the biggest challenge is the hot and humid November weather.

On other news, official photos from the M7 marathon have come in. Sorry for the gaudy pacing shirt!

Starting out with quite a few in the 2:59:59 group.
But as it goes, the group became less and less!

Just making sure I don't finish too early.

Yep, time to register my finish for my 4th M7 marathon - now the most of any one road marathon.

Really glad to have paced this guy home, he was really grateful at the finish and it made my day to read a really nice post he put up on CR.