The Bay Run

The weather had turned and it was back to fine rain with very little breeze. Quite pleasant to run in - especially for this type of session. The Claregalway Harriers (me, Fintan and Owen) set off  (nice and early - 7am) for a 2.4km warm-up. Then straight into a 13km tempo (1km more than last week). Straight away I was hanging onto the back of Fintan as he blasted up the hill towards Carnmore. After a tough first mile I settled into my running and gradually caught Fintan back up. But as soon as that happened he would gap me again on the next hill (I really am atrocious on the hills at the moment). That's how it continued. At about 10km onwards I started to feel a little better and we carried on with my wingman a few seconds up the road. I finished the 13km in a time of 45:22 (3:29's). Very happy with that - a very solid hit-out in most peoples books.

Finishing up with a 5.0km warm-down. All up 20.4kms for the day. That's the 4th week of doing this type of tempo session and it's more of an experiment on my behalf to see if it benefits my running. The early indication is that it is - but I guess I won't know for sure until I line up for a longer race. Maybe time to plan a half marathon in the next month or so...

I was thinking back to where it all started for me - the Bay Run in Sydney. My boss who took me over to Sydney from the UK took me out to the Bay one night. I was running in a pair of Adidas casual runners and I was weighing in at 99 kgs (that's around 15 and a half stone). I hadn't run in years and boy did it show. Needless to say he left me in my wake and I got lost finishing the loop as it had gotten dark in the time it had taken me to complete the lap. Glad to say I stuck with it and the Bay became my bog standard training run. I used to call it 7kms as it always timed like 7km but I think it's closer to 6.9km (that could have changed now as they were doing work on the Bridge when I left in 2009). I liked the fact that 2 laps gave you the City to Surf distance, 3 for a half, and 6 for a full marathon (not that I ever ran 6 laps - I think 5 was as much as I ever did). I always felt I was in good nick if I could run the laps under 28 minutes (sub 4 minute/km pace). Today's run just shows how much I've progressed since then - today I was running at around 24:30 lap pace. That said, I do miss the Bay - a beautiful place to train....