Real Running

At last I managed to get out and do some real running. By real running I mean no roads no cars and definitely no traffic lights! I took a little field trip and ran what proved to be a fairly challenging coastal track just north of where I live. I've been meaning to get out and do this for a while, but like all good intentions I've just never quite got around to it. So this morning, on the pretense of checking it out for a possible "family adventure" this afternoon, I hit the trails.

The track itself is quite a popular day walk as it winds its way between a number of rather beautiful bays. Towards the start of the run my time got slowed down a bit as I had to navigate my way past a large group of oldies out for a days walk (bless them). Of course I caught up to them on a big steep hill which I'd normally happily walk, but not wanting to get heckled by the fit looking old folk I sucked it up and powered on up, while tying to look fresh and happy .... Of course as soon as I was out of site I slowed right down and started to suck in as much oxygen as humanly possible!! Coastal hills (I've found out are killers - the views are good though!!)



Although one lot of views which wasn't so good was running past a bay used by "naturalist". I have to say that the idea of a nudist beach seemed a lot more appealing when I was a innocent school boy, the reality was a beach full of old men and it was all somewhat disturbing! Yuuucck ... don't worry I didn't stop for photo's!

The track wasn't as "bushy" as I'd like. I was hoping for a nice run through some of our fine native forest, but sadly the track mostly ran along the edge of some farm land, so I'll have to get back to the map to find some decent forest trails. I'm really keen to get off the roads on run more trails as its a lot better for your joints and quite simply a lot more to my liking as I grew up spending days tramping through the mountains. Also I intend to do this ultra in 2010, so will have some good motivation to run off road more.

All up the there and back run took me just under 50 minutes, so I did it twice. In the process I had a fantastic and hard workout, and managed to pick up a couple of blisters which is unusual for me (I'll be aiming to buy some proper off road running shoes at a boxing day sale somewhere.

Here's some more photo's to finish with.

Long time no post! (Blog about nothing)

Yes I have been unusually slack doing the blogging thing, so now that I have a few spare minutes I thought I could take a small step in rectifying this sorry situation.

Life has been insanely busy for me lately, mostly due to that pesty thing called WORK, the bane of most modern endurance athletes (except for the few lucky souls who can actually make a living from their chosen sport, and of course those for whom money simply isn't a problem).

Yes work has been crazy busy resulting in my training schedule being tossed out and me being left feeling absolutely stuffed. That being said, two weeks ago was my biggest (running mileage ever) ... and this week was one of the smallest (I did a longish run of 20k's last Sunday and have managed one further run of 8k since then). So I'm really hoping that things will get back on track soon, the pace at work should slow down within the next couple of weeks as people switch off for Christmas and I'll be fully back into training mode.

So I don't really have a lot to blog about, hopefully I'll have something worth reading tomorrow as I'm planning to do my long run along a new coastal track that I've sussed out (on a map anyway) - I'll take my trusty phone and snap some pictures to brighten the post up as well.

Catch ya later!