Mona Fartlek and Phil's Hill

Thursday morning was stunning, we finished just as the sun poked its nose over the hills. No wind, the city really was a picture today reflected in the glassy Perth water. The route is slightly longer at the moment because of the Red Bull Air Race and construction works. I was a little concerned about how yesterdays flu shot and iron injection would affect me, but they didn’t in the end. I have felt a little odd since yesterday evening and slept poorly, but I felt fantastic this morning. Coffee at Atomic afterwards, yum. I’ve now had two runs this week where the economy has been around 635 beats per km, which is very low for me. Long may it continue!

Thursday evening did a Mona Fartlek session in fairly cool and windy conditions. I was just going to do it fairly easy, but ended up doing a decent effort. This could have had something to do with the fact that I did my warmup into the wind down to the Mt Henry Bridge and did the session up the freeway side with the wind at my back. Still, it was a good session and did a nice hard return home into the wind as I was feeling strong (and wanted to get home!) – ended up with a good 35 minutes of hard running. I stuffed up the Mona session on the watch which meant I had to do it manually, so ended up doing an extra minute in total, for about 5.55km. 637bpk.

Friday morning recovery run, the usual route. Very low HR. Legs felt better for doing it after a good workout yesterday. I did this mid-morning – it was still fairly cool with a stiff breeze on the way back. 622bpk!

Saturday morning, I did a nice easy run in the hills ; in cool conditions (13° at the start) ran the notorious Phil's Hill aka O’Connor Road. This is a tough old bastard of a hill – 3ks straight up a gravel trail. I felt good on the climb once I’d done the first steep bit which lasts 700m or so. Completed the climb in 16 minutes which sets a benchmark for next time. I held back a little knowing I’m doing the ANZAC race tomorrow. I felt good today, although I felt hungry for most of it – I didn’t stop at all which got me back to the bakery a bit quicker. Total ascent today about 420m. I must admit I don’t really like stopping on runs of this length - once an hour is my max, and even then for only a minute or two.

Favourite story of the week:

A Scottish animal rescue centre forced a dozen hedgehogs to go on a diet because they had grown too fat to roll into a ball to protect themselves.

a sign of the times......