Less than two weeks out from the Gold Coast half and I’m very happy to report that things remain firmly on track.
Since last I checked in, the weekly mileage has been fairly steady, with outputs of 48.51K, 47.87K, 40.32K, 40.76K and 52.19K for each of the past five weeks. There were some hiccups around the time of a couple of significant deadlines in my non-running life in weeks eight and nine, as well as a couple of long runs that had to be cut slightly short due to unavoidable ablution and/or absolutely avoidable ‘failure-to-apply-body-glide’, issues.
My scheduled 10K time trial at the end of week nine went particularly well, with a time of 51:23. That turned out to be my fastest 10K in almost a year (50:35 on 13 June 2015) and felt quite comfortable. I started out conservatively at 11.1km/h and bumped up the pace by 0.1km/h for every kilometre until the 7.5K mark, when the acceleration increased until I was smashing the last 400-500 metres at over 15km/h. On reflection, I could have started at a little faster pace but I was probably too intent on wanting to make sure I had enough in the tank at the end.
So now it’s into the final hard week which is capped off with a two hour, twenty minute long run this Saturday (which should cover upwards of 21K), followed by the week 12 taper of less than 20K.
There’s really not much else to say. Injury-wise, I’ve had no real concerns. I’ve also avoided catching anything that might otherwise have laid me up during some comparatively dreadful Sydney winter weather. And, even more happily, I’ve managed to drop a few kilograms over the last few weeks - so much so that I’m anticipating being at least five kilos below my New York race weight come Sunday 3 July.
But, of course, two weeks is still a long time in the world of running …
