Run 2:44:00 [3] 37.0 km (4:26 / km)
An excellent long run in ideal conditions - cool and dry with moderate southwest winds. (I'll want to be tested more in the heat between now and Dubbo, but don't mind cool days for the really long runs). Started out through Viewbank and Montmorency, crossed the Yarra at Eltham, then a long stretch up the Yarra and Mullum Mullum Creek, before striking out across suburbia to pick up the Eastern Freeway trail at Blackburn Road. (The negative of this trail is that it's near a freeway, the positives are that you don't notice it that much because of sound barriers and there are no road crossings for 10km).
The suburban bit took me up plenty of hills and past Milgate Primary, which brought back memories of state election day 2002 and the 16.2% swing we got there. (This helped to get a friend of mine, who'd put her hand up six weeks before polling day to avoid the embarrassment of leaving the seat uncontested, within 200 votes of getting elected in a supposedly impossible seat). I was feeling a bit less favourably disposed towards the locals in 2007 than I had in 2002 on discovering that 'Residents Only' signs had sprouted on the entrances to the local parkland areas. (Naturally I ignored these whilst thinking under my breath 'you miserable (expletive deleted)'). Maybe that's why what would otherwise be an ideal (if slightly steep) street-O area has never, to my knowledge, been used.
The start of the run was a bit iffy with some Achilles soreness that took longer to disappear than it usually does, but I handled the long climb up Old Eltham Road with ease which was an indicator that it was going to be good. The next hour was excellent, flowing beautifully and handling the hills with ease. In the last hour muscle stiffness started to come into play but my running strength was as good as ever, with the last 5k being the fastest section of the whole run. A very encouraging performance.
As for the tooth, the good news is that it's been sorted out (and getting an unbroken night's sleep was nice), the bad news is that it's just as well I recently paid off my house because the visit cost about as much as I used to be paying each fortnight on my mortgage.