The Bay Run

So after what was a fairly chilled week following the marathon, with just a nice 4 miler on Thursday morning, following a few days of rest. Today was a break from the norm of long distance running, and a 7km lung buster called The Bay Run. This is one lap of a bay as you might imagine, and is here I do quite a lot of my running as it's a beautiful part of Sydney.

So another early Sunday morning start, and I wasnt quite sure how I was going to fair in this little sprint a week after the marathon. The stretch goal was under 28 mins, but I always knew that would be a tall order to achieve, so thought that anything under 30 mins would be respectable. The start was hilarious as loads of people got themselves to the front, who quite clearly had very little running ability. This was proven as when the start gun went off, they sprinted to the first 400 metres of so, before rapidly slowing down (some almost to a standstill)... it really was funny. I too though thought I started off quite quickly, but found myself smack in 4 minutes for the first kilometer. It was at aorund 2kms that I felt my calf twinge a little, and I thought that if it started to get any worse then I'd definately stop and pull out. However it held up fine for the rest of the race. At 4kms, I was still on track at 4 minute kilometres, but my legs started to burn a little and I knew that it would be extremely tough keeping this pace going for another 3kms. I also decided that for the sake of my calf, I didnt want to push it too hard for the sake of gaining an extra minute here or there, so fell into what I thought was a slower and more comfortable pace, although the heart rate as still up at 180, and was around 170-180 for the entire race.

By 6kms the legs were truely burning and the effects of the marathon were still in them, but I pushed on and with 500 metres to go, put the after burners on and overtook a few people, coming home in 28mins and 51secs, coming in 70th out of 1,215. Not quite the stretch goal time, but still pretty pleased that I came in under 29 minutes, and I was fairly happy with that given that I'd run a marathon only a week previously.

This week, I'm back to normal training again, but quite a few marathons coming up in the next 2 months. next is Wagga Wagga trail marathon, followed by Fraser Island trail marathon, then the Glasshouse 100km (hmmmm, still not sure about this!). Then the sydney amrathon, and then finally the Melbourne marathon, where I'm going to try and run a sub 3hr 25min. Yikes!