Nobody feels any pain ....

.... so Bob sang to me this morning. And it seemed pretty true at the time.

My pgm read 1 1/2 hrs and being my day off I didn't see the point in dragging myself out of bed to join the Regatta Runners at 6am. Instead I hit the road at the much more respectable time of 8.30.

In preparation for a longish solo run I loaded up the iPod last night with a few things including "Murphy & Bernard's Greatest Hits", a great home made compilation given to me. It has all sorts of stuff including Dylan, Spiderbait, XTC, The Saints (fantastic cover version of 'Lipstick On Your Collar') and a Martha Wainwright song that's best not sung out loud.

Headed inbound on the bikeway. It was a little crowded, with a big group of Wesley Hospital patients (from the pain management clinic I think) doing their morning walk. It never hurts to be reminded of how precious health and well-being is.

It was nice and warm here in Brissie this morning, I was glad to hit the shade of the Riverside Expressway just a few km in to the run. Ran up to Riverside Centre, did a few laps around the Gardens then headed back. All up just over 16k in the 90 mins so it was a pretty leisurely pace. But easy as it was when I got home the quads were tight and hurting just a bit.

At "School Of Pain" this evening the group had their first ever 3k time trial. Chris looked after the timing, Clairie volunteered to bolt up to the halfway mark to indicate to them where they had to turnaround, and I opted to stand in a spot that gets a bit dodgey when bikes fly by. When the last girl came through I ran with her for a while and suggested she set a goal of staying in touch with the two girls in front, and not let them get any further away. She told me her goal was just to run the 3k non stop, which she did, but she also managed to stay the same distance behind the other girls. Everyone in the group put in solid efforts, and times ranged from 13:09 to just over 19 minutes. Not bad for a bunch of 'beginners'!

Oh, and about not feeling any pain - my quads still hurt :-(

Going It Alone

After seeing Clairie's great comeback from injury, and knowing that she is only going to get better and better, I feel the least she deserves is to finally have her blog all to herself. So after creating my own blog (in January I think it was) I'm gonna actually start using it. Dunno how long the enthusiasm, if you can call it that, will last. Anyway, straight down to business .....

Speaking of Clairie, it was great to see her at Pat's today, back from the west. On the warm up out to the boat shed at West End we heard all about the hilly rainy Perth City 2 Surf. It sounded like one tough race!

We had a couple of fit looking newbies join the group today. A number of the regulars were missing though, so I was pleased to have a few others around my pace to run with. This morning's session was 6 x 500m with a 60 sec standing recovery and 1 x 1k. My times were - 1:49, 1:53, 1:57, 1:56, 1:58, 1:59 and 4:05 for the 1k. How good would it to be able to run them all as fast as that first one! Or better still string six of them together for next weeks 3k time trial :-)

Back to reality. I was pretty happy to sneak under the 2 min mark for the 500s and not die too much for the 1k. Checking back on similar workouts this year my times are no slower which is a good sign, considering I'm still just slightly feeling the effects of my cold. Though I'm guessing the 1 1/2 hour run tomorrow and 1k reps on Thursday might be more of a struggle.

Karisma emailed me this morning to asking if I was in taper mode for Sydney. Well I am, but it sure doesn't feel like it.