Lake Gwelup Fun Run (6k)

Started this week well, with 50k in the first 3 days, including a good interval session on Tuesday night in the Hattoris - 16k all up and no problem with pain.

Unfortunately got sick with a virus on Friday and only ended up running 70k for the week.

Today was a public holiday in Perth (Foundation Day, soon to be 'WA day') and I decided on a funrun:

Feeling better after a virus in the last couple of days, I decided to still do Lake Gwelup. My practice is in Gwelup, so lots of the kids and their parents are my patients – a certain amount of pride involved.

This was a 2 lap event. The start was fairly congested but luckily the caller asked the 6k runners to come to the front seeing a sea of kids at the starting line. So I had a fairly free start, although at 1k I was about 12th .By 2k I was 6th and at the end of the first lap there were 2 in front of me, both running the one lapper, and a two lapper by my side. This turned out to be Kyle Eager, who’s a 36-37min 10k runner (ran 36:40 at Bridges this yr).

I knew things would get congested at in the last 2k, so I tried to keep the pace up for the 4th km, and from the rceding sound of Kyle’s breath, had gapped him by 50m or so.

Very quickly came the traffic of walkers and pram-pushers, on a bike path with very little space either side. I picked my way through, slowing a bit because of this. Things opened up again in the last km and I ran most of it on the grass on the side of the path.

I kept a little in reserve in case I was chalenged, but never heard his breathing again, and won by 15-20 seconds.

22:10 was good – I think about a minute faster han B’Mans time of a couple of years ago, although these days he’s have been faster again. For me this was more like 10k effort today, which was pleasing.

Splits: 3:22/3:35/3:35/3:42/3:51/3:39/+100m

I think I benefited from there being a number of runs this weekend and a marathon 2 weeks away. Certainly surprised a few of my patients who dodn’t know I ran!

Now to taper