Thursday 8 February 2007

Thu 08 Feb 07, Dad's 60th birthday


Dad turned 60 today, I turn 40 in April and Cam turns 20 in July, so easy to remember our ages.... :-)

Up nice and early and at the Albert Park Aquatic Centre for a swim just after 6am. I 'pushed' myself and swam 1.2km, what a struggle. No running today, racing at Olympic Park tomorrow, a 1500m & a 3k.

Wed 07 Feb 07, Sunset Series Zoo Race Report; I arrived just after 6pm and found David T within a few minutes, we went for a 15 minute warm up run and stretched prior to the race and situated ourselves nice and early on the 2nd row of the start line. About 10 min before the start I caught up with Tiger Boy and then Eat Em and a few other friends on the start line.

Jokingly David was stirring me up telling me I would start to fast (I have a history) and we were guessing how fast the first k would be, I was hoping for 3:50ish so I was pleasantly surprised with a 3.56, David was suggesting 3:35-40! Of course the 2nd km was slower, a slight rise and then the twisty part of the zoo, I didn't really have any problems through here this year with other runners, just in front of me was a lady who was my pace and eventually beat me by 20-30 seconds, so I followed her and didn't need to worry about passing. The second lap was a struggle, heavy legs occurred and having to stop in the zoo due to 'walkers' who walked 3-4 abreast wearing head phones and not caring at all or listening to someone calling "passing right", this occurred twice. Overall not a bad run, the second lap shows a runner who was not fresh but saying that, I am happy with 33:12, considering the past months workload.

My splits were: 3.56, 4.15, 3.59, 4.00, 4.12, 4.27, 4.20, 4.01 = 33.12

David's splits: 3.56, 4.10, 4.02, 3.53, 4.07, 4.24, 4.09, 3.50 = 32.35

Looking at my splits I am very happy with the first 4k and would have liked to run the 5th km a tad faster. The 6km is good considering coming to a stand still twice, but the 6-7k time is disappointing, I know I lost concentration and should have run that km at least 10 sec faster. So overall I think I should have run 32:50ish on my current form, but as I said above, I'm happy enough.

4 comments:

Ewen said...

Not bad Stu - you're getting there. A nicely controlled first km. Seems about right by the look of the other splits.

Happy Birthday to your Dad. A new age-group :)

Tesso said...

Great work in the race. Must have been a bit annoying with the walkers getting in the way, but I guess everybody had to contend with them.

So, is Cam going to keep the tradition going and father a boy this year ;-)

Clairie said...

ha ha Tess beat me to it. I was going to suggest you preparing to be a grandpa!!!

I can't bear running where there are the 'walkers' going 3-4 abreast. I dont mind in a fun run, but where I have a goal I want to do and it becomes impossible because of this it is very frustrating.

Good run!

Spark Driver said...

I did the Zoo run last year but don't remember having trouble with walkers. I was a bit further back in the field though finishing in 40ish minutes.