Last week I managed to put a weekly total of 30K on the board, something I have not done since late June / early July but I feel I may finally be back on the road to hitting 70K/week.

Often feeling like Sisyphus and the boulder, my magic 70k/week comes so so close before my distance boulder rolls back down the hill.

Of course, sticking to the Greek myth I know for a fact that when I hit that magic 70 my boulder will roll back down the hill and I will be forever pushing my boulder towards 90, 100, 120 kilometers per week. Well, everyone needs a hobby, right? Even if it is pushing mythological boulders up mythological hills.

November

Speaking of hills. As I ramp up the distances I cannot avoid running up hills, which has been fun, if I am honest. I have discovered a nice long climb that gets me out of the Warrandyte valley and on my way towards the Yarra river trails without sapping all my strength which has done wonders for my condidence regarding a possible November race.

City2Sea, on November 20th, takes runners along  15K course from the CBD to St Kilda Beach on a route that is mostly flat, if not down-right downhill for the most part. The times from previous years indicate that this race is fast. If I want to put in a fast time of say 1hr15 then I will need to get strong at not only running distance but hills so I have the power to conquor City2Sea.

Warrandyte River Runners

I am still running strong with this group, still enjoying the weekly runs along the river path. The Spring season has just begun and my handicap is still at the 6:30min mark. As I focus on reducing speed and building up my endurance I thought I would have to make a conscious effort to reel in the pace, but as the first race of the season showed that really isn’t the case.

For the first race of the season I came in 5th overall which puts me 7th on the current points table, but it’s a 5th overall whilst still knocking out a 24 minute 5K.

What I am realising is that I have come accustomed to running 23/24 minute 5K runs with the River Runners and enjoy the challenege of the pace. If the trend continues (and it probably will) then I may be down the bottom of the ladder for most of this season and I may not set a new PB every other week but the other runners will need to run real fast too, if they are to stay ahead of me.

1K Series

On Facebook, the Doha Bay Running Club (DBRC) have been posting about their 1K series, which they often do this time of year. I took part in this series last year and really enjoyed the short speed work, so I am going to run something similar over here with the river runners.

The Plan: An 8 week 1K time trial series

Weeks 1 and 8 will be the time trial – a nice 1K stretch along the Pound Road.

Weeks 2-7 will alternate between hill repeats and interval sprints.

It should be fun and it might just get us all a little bit quicker for our weekly 5K and the variety of running events coming up over the next 4 or 5 months.