Having fun & looking good !

Had a lovely & relaxing Saturday. A rest day. Thank goodness. A relaxing morning laying around the house reading the papers before heading to the bike shop for a bit of a fine tune for my nameless bike - the stem has been shortened slightly & (most importantly) a woman's seat is now installed. My butt is extremely thankful.

This morning I crawled out of bed at the respectable time of 5.30am after getting a text message reminding me that I was running today ;-) One of the benefits of doing a race that starts at 8am.

I got to the start just before 7am with friends from work who I had bumped into on the bus. After watching the marathon start, I walked down to Luna Park to use the toilets. Wise move. The queues for the toilets at this stage were incredible. Back onto the grass near the start I found my 'pacee' Lulu together with Sparkie & Beki. A few weeks ago when I expressed apathy about running this event, Lulu suggested that I run it with her. I'm really glad I did.

Lulu didn't want to worry about pace today & so had left her Garmin at home. My instructions, as pacer, were simply to make sure we didn't go out too hard - ie under 6min/km pace. This resulted in me amusing myself to no end in ways to advise Lulu that she was flying (think of the beeping of a reversing truck & you've got the idea). I have to say that I run or walk across the Harbour Bridge pretty regularly but I still get a kick of running straight down the middle of it.



Needless to say I enjoyed seeing the cheersquad - thanks to Rags for this somewhat embarrassing photo!



Our splits for the first 5kms show that Lulu was running much stronger than I think she anticipated:

6:14
5:59
5:46
6:14
5:47

Needless to say, this pacer needs to work on her consistency.

Just before the 5km mark, I declared that I just HAD to make a toilet stop. Which is when the fun began. Lulu continued on & set me the goal of trying to catch her. I headed into the toilet block & found myself in a queue behind 5 or 6 girls. Yikes. About 2mins later, I was back on the road & the fun began. My ducking, weaving & sidestepping skills normally used at C2S came in handy & I flew up Art Gallery Road. It was actually good to have Lulu to chase. I HATE Art Gallery Road - without knowing my 'rabbit' was ahead of me, I think I would have settled in for a leisurely finish.

Getting to the top of Macquarie Street, I had just about given up hope of catching Lulu. But with just under a a km to go, I spotted Lulu's golden hair reflecting in the sunlight & about 30sec later was on her shoulder. I think I scared her when I suddenly said 'hello'.

Lulu ran strongly to the end to finish in 53:34mins (aver 5:54min/km). I'm pretty pleased with the last 3kms - I was pushing it trying to catch Lulu. And did I mention that I HATE Art Gallery Rd ?

7:41 (pit stop)
5:16
5:29
4:47

Most importantly Lulu & I achieved our goal for the day: to have fun & not break anything while looking glamorous :-)

After collecting my bag - which took about 4mins compared to 45mins last year - I headed up to join the ever growing cheersquad on the Cahill Expressway to cheer the marathon runners in. Blue Dog's great run 2 weeks after doing GH (100miles) & Uncle Dave's great run - and celebratory dance - were a particular highlight. Afterwards, it was off to the Orient for a cleansing ale & food with a great group of cool runners :-)

Thanks to Lulu for your company & for making it soooo much more fun !

Edit - and the results are in:
Gun time: 1:02:19
Net time: 53:36
797 in my catagory, LOL!

MTD: 54kms

This week - not a bad week of training for me, though I didn't quite do as much strength work as I wanted to:
3 x runs (total 21.18kms)
2 x rides
1 x GRC Pilates class
1 x weights session with Satan

The week ahead - no idea. Will see how my legs feel in the morning. Besides I've left my diary at work. Will update tomorrow.