Last of the Big Ones

After my enthusiastic (ahem) sprint sessions, I decided to head out for an hour's hill work and see if I could push the tempo somewhat (which reminds me, I must sort out my mp3 player with some decent music).

I headed out onto the hills on a humid Tuesday and got as far as the beginning of the Ngaio firebreak only to get buffeted by huge winds which, given the low visibility (50m) made little sense to me (surely winds of that strength would have blown the low cloud away?) Anyway, the non-meteorologist in me turned tail and went off to find another run where I could both see and run safely - gees I'm picky.

After an hour of staggering around, I returned home: it was a hard and uncomfortable run - and a good reminder to CUT MY TOENAILS before I do any long runs, oh say, next weekend! (Ed's note - Eleanor was going to insert an image of 'long toenails' in here, but the images that came up under that search are enough to provide nightmares themselves, let alone combining them with the photo below - you have been warned).

Thursday's run was much better, give or take the huge "I hate running, I really mean it, why am I doing this?, I HATE IT" mindset I fought for the first hour (I was running in the Butterfly Creek gully again over in Eastbourne and there was no radio reception there). However, when I negotiated with myself to go on for another hour and then turn back (I wanted to put in a tough 4 hours), I felt much better.

I decided to turn my focus on getting to Mt. Lowry's summit before I reached my turn around time (2.5hours given the return would be faster, downhill) so pushed it hard.

I'd forgotten how tough the terrain was and after a couple of months absence and the arrival of spring, the paths are overgrown, and 5 times I had to stop and check I was still on path before retracing my steps.

My legs really felt the different terrain - big rutted descents followed by steep rooty ascents and duck-down-and-climb-over paths. I was working really hard, but reckon I must have been covering the terrain faster to develop such a lovely sweat mark at the Mt. Lowry summit. Yes, that's my butt sweat (and proof that I haven't lost that much weight!). Yum!

I didn't have any Em's Powerbars with me and spent the entire run gulping Leppins. It was a bit of an experiment to see how the body held up solely on liquid gels (fine as it turns out) but also because I didn't actually have any Powerbars at home (will have to head to Gymeez and correct that!)

The weather was decidedly nicer than it had been last time I came this way. The photo on the left is the view on the descent from Mt. Hawtrey - and where I'd got so terrified about being lost.

I made it back to the car in exactly 4hrs, having covered 18km. It was perhaps not the best run to finish the last of my large training runs on (in 4hrs I'd hope to have covered more like 24km) but I know the track will be much easier on the Kepler, unless they've thrown in a secret obstacle course, just for kicks. And St. John's Ambulance crew practice.