Well, that was embarrassing. And very disappointing.
I’d finally arrived back in Sydney early on Saturday 13 August to line up for the City-to-Surf the next day. Only a few days before, I’d walked into the famed cathedral at Santiago de Compostela at the end of the simply extraordinary 800K Camino Frances pilgrimage across Spain (you’ve got to find the time to do it, folks - it’s just amazing). I then began an increasingly tortuous series of flights that would see me back to Sydney well in time for the race to Bondi Beach.
But, alas, my body clock got the better of me and I somehow managed to sleep through the 6:30am alarm on Sunday morning. When I finally woke up at 9:30am, the starting gun for the blue group had been fired an hour before and most of the runners would have been slogging it out along Military Parade waiting for the start of that long, wonderful, descent into Bondi Beach.
It’s only the third City-to-Surf I’ve missed in the past 25 years. The first was in 2000 because I was too sick to attempt it, and the second was in 2011 because I’d managed to be in Melbourne during the weekend of the race after I got the dates mixed up.
As I mentioned in my last post, I wasn’t expecting a quick time there at all. But it’s the City-to-Surf and I had to do it. And I’m pretty annoyed I missed it.
But now it’s onwards and upwards to Auckland on 30 October - just over 10 weeks away.
I’ve not done much training at all since my return from Spain with only a quick 5K on Thursday to blow out the cobwebs. I’m still suffering a little from the time zone changes and feeling quite lethargic as a result. Although this morning I managed to sleep in until just after 3:00am, which was a big improvement! After a comparatively injury-free Camino, I’ve now managed to pick up a slight back problem somewhere in the last 24 hours, so I didn’t run on Friday. I’ll see how it goes on a 10K run tomorrow (Saturday). I'm hoping it's because my body is still getting used to me moving around without an overloaded backpack strapped to it.
Finally, one of the many positive outcomes of the Camino for me has been that I’ve managed to drop about 5 kilograms since the Gold Coast race, meaning I’m now at my lowest weight (89 kilograms) since my marathon days a decade ago. One of my key goals over the next training cycle will be to maintain and improve on that, and to that end, I think I’ll slightly increase the speed and gradients of most of my training runs. I’ll also continue with the longer long-run strategy. It seemed to give me some extra endurance at the Gold Coast so when you’re on a good thing, stick to it.
