Planned run 90 minutes - Did a 10km race instead

Date: 26 April 2009
Time: 48 minutes 2 seconds
Distance: 10km
Approx Speed: 12.49 kmh
Average Heart Rate: 158
Google Ped: none

Christine and I stayed at Surfers Paradise Friday and Saturday nights. The hotel was facing the Southern end of the 'Night Club Strip' in Surfers, and the noise from a newly opened nightclub nearby caused us to not sleep well at all. The Saturday night before the run we ended up moving to a different room at about 11PM. We had to be up and about at 6AM for the run at Runaway Bay. So we suffered badly from lack of sleep.

Also in the lead up to this run I had a small injury on my left calf. Christine had a 40 minute run Friday, and in my last blog post I said I would not be running until my calf was good. Well I went out for a slow run with her instead. I really should have rested it!! I pulled up sore again Friday night. I had a really good massage Saturday afternoon, which limbered me up really well. I felt like I had gone to the gym after it was over!!

Next up, temptation got the better of me, I have a few beers the night before the run, but not enough to be hungover at all Sunday. So, three things were against me:

- Lack of sleep
- Bad calf
- A few beers the night before

After all that I managed to run the race in 48min 2 sec, a definite best performance for me. I had to run without striding out as much as I wanted to avoid hurting my calf muscle, and I used all thighs and bum muscles to get going ;) I got to 8km in pretty close to 37minutes 30 sec which is also a best time for me in that distance.

The calf did not trouble me too much overall, just slowed me down a little. My tactics in the run were - Take off, see how calf feels, run till I get sweaty and drink as much as I could at the water stations. They have one at the 3km mark and doing another lap we reached it again at about 7km. I actually stopped running and grabbed two cups of water each time, walking as I drank then took off again. Considering all these factors and a sensible trouble free build up to a future 10km run, I feel I have a 45minute run in me. So that is my next aim, break 45 in 10kms.

One injury still troubling me, the left calf, but it is on the mend. No other injuries, so I anticipate my next training run on Tuesday I will be in good shape again.