Training Log Archive: devil

Another short run on the streets, as it was early I went through the city centre past the cathedral etc. Still three more days of conference to go, which is not good for my sitting legs. The venue changes tomorrow and will hopefully have better air conditioning.

Morning run, through the streets again, but did find a bit of a park to go through as well. Not quite as hot as yesterday which is good.

Entered the Kepler challenge again - it was easier this year as 6.30am NZ time was 8.30pm in Austria, beats waking up at 4am to enter.

Headed out for a morning run, aiming for a park I saw on the map which I thought might be a good location to do some intervals one day. There turned out to be a massive wall around it, so I ran round the outside. The weather in vienna is quite hot and humid which makes sitting in a conference the whole day a bit tiring, at least the morning was reasonably pleasant for running.

Would have run this morning, but my luggage was still on the way from london and got to the hotel a bit too late this morning

C • Bugger 1

Travelling, so another rest day. Arrived to find Vienna is hot and humid

Back at canberra airport for the 4th day in a row. This time flying off to Vienna for a conference, so a definite rest day. Luckily have scored an upgrade on the leg to London, which is definitely better for my legs than sitting in economy for 24 hours.

Event: Gold Coast Airport Marathon
 

Gold coast half. Got there on time for the 6am stary and went through the priority lane to warm up in the elite zone. Sadly that was the only elite thing about this run, set off at 3.35ish pace aiming for sub 77 which was good for about 9 km, then I had an attack of shopping legs and was struggling to keep it under 4min kms. Kept plugging away and had a gel halfway which helped a bit and managed to lift to 3.57s for the last 5km.
Then watched jase do an impressive marathon, followed by sitting in the sun for a couple of hours, then spent half an hour in a multi storey car park while acejase remembered where he'd put the car.

Longer version of the report in between flights in Singapore:
The half had a rather early 6am start, thanks to acejase for waking up to drive me down there before getting ready for the marathon. I thought that there'd be a lot of queuing up, but the bag drop was very quick, just a bit of a wait for the toilets. Then it was into the prancing zone on the road in front of the start, quite a few names I recognised in there and being able to do a few run-throughs was better than joining the 10,000 packed into the start area.
I'd decided to go for 75-76 minutes, which meant doing somewhere in the vicinity of 3.35 kms. The warm up paid off and I felt good off the start and was on pace. The course was flat apart from bridges over canals, there wasn't much of a group where I was, but was running with a girl with a name on her front for the first 8-9 km. Can't really say much about the course, pretty non-descript. At about 9km I started to feel very tired and faded quite rapidly, and it was suddenly a struggle to hold even 4 min kms. I started nibbling on a gel at halfway to try and get some energy back. Still felt like I was going backwards after the turn round but didn't slow any more. With about 5km to go I thought I was maybe on for 80 mins so lifted the pace a bit, I think the gel had helped and I sped up by a few seconds per km. Could hear the national anthem for the mara start and see the packed starting line as I headed into the finish chute.
Based on this years results, it seems that not tapering and doing a long ride the day before might be optimal for half maras for me.