7 weeks to go

So, it is now 7 weeks to go before my first full marathon race. I had planned to do the Noosa Winter Festival Half Marathon on 23rd May, but decided not to. I have one of the total of three 3 hour runs scheduled on the 23rd, and I was willing to do a half marathon race instead. The other two 3 hour runs happen on 30 May and 6 June.

But since all the disruption that this travelling has caused, I was in no shape at all to do a decent HM, and the benefit of such a race is minimal. I really need to get the endurance aspect of training done so the 3 hour run is more important at this stage in training.

Just to summarise - I went to Canberra on the Monday, May 3rd. I did the following runs while away:

- 5km on May 4
- 18km on May 5
- 10km on May 7
- 4km on May 13

I returned to Australia on 19 May, and needed a day to recover from jetlag and the horror of the travelling itself:

- Up at 5AM in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia on 17 May
- Worked up until 5:15PM in Al Khobar , finally found evidence required to locate where a technical issue could be resolved. It ended up being in a third party software module
- Got back to Hotel, grabbed a limo to Bahrain, had dinner in a Turkish Restaurant
- Had to catch a plane from Bahrain to Dubai at 3:50AM 18 May, so went to a late night bar, had a few beers
- Got to Airport Bahrain at about midnight, checked in
- Flew to Dubai, had a few hours wait there then 6:50AM flight to Brisbane.
- 14 hours to Brisbane.

I was lucky the aircraft was not full, and I had seat D, with two seats vacant. That allowed me to stretch out and sleep a little. Even then I was sleep deprived.

From now on I need to make every run count, and hit the gym to build up strength again. The 3 hour run in two days will be very hard, so I will take it really slow.