Elleker HM : 2nd in 1:17:20

It's been a while. Most of my training's on Strands these days. A brief recap ; 6x1000m with 3 min jog recoveries on Tuesday after, then aother 12km tempo run on Thursday. That should have got my threshold running up to date ! A 26k long run in Denmark on road and trail @ 4:18 pace, a tough Mona session on the inlet trail on Tuesday arvo, a 12km easy run on Wednesday, the crappest recovery run ever on Thursday morning, followed by an 8km tempo run on Thursday on the inlet, and two much better recoveries friday and saturday before the race on Sunday. In retrospect, the thursday tempo was too long by a couple of ks, but the recovery in the morning was such a disaster, i needed a confidence boost. How fragile is the mind...

The weather Sunday was perfect. I was hoping to run 1:16:xx, but it didn't quite work out. Darren Jenkins took off at the start, too fast for me and he quickly established a 20m lead. He settled after that and a stuck to him, albeit about 10 seconds back, that's pretty much how it was the whole race. I found it hard to find my rythm early, but ground it out trying to hold my pace and concentrating on my 3-2 breathing so as not to go too hard. This is a nice course of two laps with gentle ups and downs with a short sharp hill about 6km into the lap. Course map here.

By half way I managed to find some rythm, but that was quickly blown by the water bottle retrieval at the drinks table. I left a special drink so i could take a gel, but had to pretty much stop at the table and go back around the water helpers to get back on the course. Struggled to get the gel and water in while retaining pace so lost a at leat 10-15 sec on this split. Soon found rythm again and started to feel stronger as the final lap progressed. I felt I was catching the leader, albeit slowly. Last 5k was tough, and the hill took a bit out of my legs, but out of Darren's too.Charged in, and ended up only 9 seconds adrift in 1:17:20.

Splits: 10.55/10.55 : 38:40 / 38:40
                         5k : 18:00 / 18:31 / 18:31 / 18:26 / 3:49 (1.1km)
                       10k : 36:31 / 36:57 / 3:49 (1.1km)