Ouch

Around The Bay race start in 1896!

On Sunday I ran in the Around the Bay Road Race down in Hamilton. 5,700 runners over 30K of roads, the last ten K quite rolling... I've done this race three times before but was feeling better prepared this year and hoped to get down from the low 2:20's to perhaps as fast as 2:15.

Didn't happen. Although the weather was decent (overcast, cool and dry) I actually fell back a minute or two finishing in 2:23:55. My girlfriend Janet ran too, she was treating it as a training run but still pulled off an impressive time of 2:40:20. How could this happen to me, a celebrated marathon clinic coach?

Well I spent Saturday modeling Tony Little's Easy Shaper Total Body Exerciser on The Shopping Channel. Three live shows, the last one at 11:00 PM. Roughly two and a half hours of "weight" training: curls, presses, squats. A pretty good gadget actually. I arrived at the starting line Sunday morning exhausted and sore! It did not bode well, although I managed to hold my planned pace until about 16K. Then my quads started tightening, and cramping a bit. I had to take lots of walking breaks and even stopped to stretch a few times.

10K split: 44:08 Pace: 4:25/km
15K split: 1:07:04 Pace: 4:28/km
20K split: 1:30:59 Pace: 4:32/km
Finish Time: 2:23:55 Pace: 4:47/km
Overall Place 691, 113/592 in M45-49

That evening I also took in the Australian Formula One race with my friend Brian. Walking down into his basement entertainment room was... painful. The season opener two weeks ago in Bahrain was a bit of a snooze, although it was interesting seeing the new strategies that came from needing to carry their full fuel load from the start and the shuffled driving partnerships. There were four new teams fighting it out at the back of the pack too.

Melbourne's first corner is always interesting!

Melbourne however was a real cracker of a race. Everyone started on rain tires, and racing incidents in the first corner mixed the field up. Jenson Button made early change to dries which seemed to put him out of contention, but it proved to be an excellent move. When the front left wheel of race leader Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull failed in the middle of the race, Jenson found himself in first place! There was a long battle for fifth place between Hamilton, Webber, Massa and Alonso. It looks like the teams to beat this year will be Red Bull, Ferrari, and McLaren.

Listening to: Red Heart by Hey Rosetta! from Into Your Lungs.