Centennial Park: 2K, 1600, 1200.

TUESDAY 7/2/06, 6.30AM, 7K, 6 HOURS SLEEP, BAREFOOT

To Centennial Park again. The cough I'd had for the previous fortnight had taken a turn for the worse overnight and I was spluttering and blowing all morning. Today's session was 2K, 1600m, 1200m x 2, with 2 minute recoveries.

A quick warmup on the grass of Mackay Oval, then we spent the session chasing Fats. At SW's sessions I've fallen into a pattern of often duelling with a lady named Lowana, and so it proved today- on the second rep she sat on my shoulder and sprinted past with a few metres to go, I tried to do the same to her on the next one but just couldn't make it.

2K- 7.57
1600m- 6.17
1200m- 4.47

Opted out of the last rep- I was coughing badly and didn't see the need to bury myself given my health over the weekend. Felt like I was moving well on the first twp reps, the third was pretty hard work. Not bad pace- in the end all the reps were at sub 4 minute pace.

Striders Lane Cove 10K.

SATURDAY 4/2/06, 7AM, 12.5K, WEEKLY TOTAL 40K, 5 HOURS SLEEP, SHOES: ASICS 1100s

To Lane Cove National Park for the opening Striders 10K of the year.

Hadn't felt good all week and had some recurrence of Glandular Fever symptoms in the previous few days- night sweats, rough sleep, lack of appetite etc. In my warmup I felt pretty ordinary at first, but was moving reasonably well once I got a sweat up.

The opening kilometre was very slow by usual standards- 4.31. I was runnign with Amjan and FPT but they gradually pulled away. 2K split was 4.28, then 3K (Scribbly Gum hill) was about 5 minutes, and then the whole field proceeded to move past me as my legs died- quads and calves had nothing. Funnily enough I was never really breathing hard in this race- just no energy or strength.

Finally got to the finish in a very dispiriting 46.47. I was buggered- pretty much spent the rest of the weekend in bed, got up around 4pm on Sunday.

This race was fairly crushing mentally. My Glandular Fever has a rough pattern of stretches of several "good days" (sometimes a week or more) where I'm reasonably functional in day to day life and I can run well enough to indicate I'm actually in reasonable shape; then there are stretches of "bad days" where things are buggered. Problem is, I can't really control when the bad periods come. Or go.

Long Arms Fartlek.

THURSDAY 2/2/06, 6.30AM, 9K, WEEK TO DATE 27.5K, 6 HOURS SLEEP, SHOES: ASICS 1100s

To Centennial Park for fartlek with Long Arms' group (special guest- Liz Miller). Awfully warm and humid- at 6.30am it was 25 degrees and 94% humidity.

For fartlek we more or less ran the perimeter fence of the Park with a couple of loops through the middle to finish off, about 50 minutes running total. Mostly grass or dirt underfoot, with a little footpath mixed in. SW would direct us to surge to the corner, or the top of the hill, or bottom of the hill, or the next fence, etc... then jog until we met up with him again.

I was battling from the start- felt awful, and spent a lot of the session trying (and failing) to keep up with Amjan. By the end some of the slower girls were overtaking me on the surges. Not good. Think this might have been a "glandular day", especially given the humidity this morning.

It's Hot....

WEDNESDAY 2/1/06, 12.30PM, 11.5K, WEEK TO DATE 18.5K, 7 HOURS SLEEP, SHOES : NIKE FREES

Into LCNP on a damned hot day- 31 degrees at 12.30, rising to 34 an hour later. Felt a bit flat and tired (partly the heat, partly yesterday's session, partly general wankiness), and ambled down to the weir in a touch over 26 minutes. Due to the heat I gave myself a dousing from a tap at the weir, and another one a couple of K into the return trip.

However, it was becoming damned difficult to run in the heat and humidity (the road is under a tree canopy and therefore has no wind) and I want to run well in the 10K this Saturday, so I walked about a kilometre (including Scribbly Gum hill) to cool off and recover a bit. Encountered Leftie, who was doing a shorter run than his usual due to the heat as well. Jogged it in from Scribbly in 64 minutes.