Today was another day of not running and yet again I had good intentions but got side tracked. Ended up walking the dogs to the local shops after spending the afternoon at the local pool with my eldest daughter. The morning was a write off after a long lay in, leaving my bed around 10am!, and then walking the dogs as I knew I was out with no1 daughter to the pool in the afternoon. Late afternoon was spent skateboarding with my youngest daughter (no3) and then onto the laptop for some work that needed looking at before Monday. All in all a busy day and I now type this post while waiting for my current Wife (no1) to cook me scrambled eggs on toast. Once this is taken care of it’ll be too late for a run and, voila, another day with no running .

That last paragraph was Saturday and I managed to repeat the process for Sunday. Today was about walking the dogs again, twice, dropping no2 Daughter into Perth, sneaking in work for a couple of hours and then returning to Perth to pick up no2 daughter. A quick trip to Yelo for a coffee and muffin and the day is gone. It’s amazing how the day can disappear. I’m sure I’ve written posts on making time for running in-between life’s demands but I seem to have lost the knack lately.

In my defence I am still recovering from Man-flu, which as every man knows it potentially life threatening, so I shouldn’t be too hard on myself surely? Could I have got up early and ran, definitely, did I, no. This ,it  seems , is the problem. For that last few years I have always been an early riser and have seen the sunrise on hundreds of occasions and each time was as enjoyable as the last but for some reason this year I just haven’t had the motivation.  There must have been two or three posts on losing my mojo this year alone and, even now, I’m struggling.  I’m partly putting this down to man-flu as I was so keen to kick-on after the City to Surf and run a quicker time at the Perth Running Festival (PRF) ( https://perthrunningfestival.com.au ) As this is now not going to happen I’m considering binning the PRF completely and concentrating on the 6 inch trail ultra in December. A lot will depend on how I go this week. If I can run 100k for the week, and not feel too fatigued,  Perth Running Festival could be on,  if not I’m happy enough to concentrate on the 6 inch.

Is two sub3 marathons enough for 2019? Probably not, I do need to sneak in another one but timing is everything and there’s not too much around early November if I miss the PRF. I found a marathon over in NSW which fits the bill on the 17th November ( https://www.jervisbaymarathon.com/athletes/event-info/ ) but its a fair way to travel ?

On a different note my mate Zac sent me this image, see below,  yesterday. It seems me and my mate Geoffa made the top 10 Melbourne Marathons in 2010. We were both representing Western Australia in the National Marathon Championships. What this really meant is no one else wanted to go and we were going anyway so it was money towards flights and free accomodation with the other runners, and the invited Kenyans. It also meant getting changed in the MCG with the elite runners and starting at the front of the 7000+ field. As you can see in the photo below for a few hundred metres I was in the lead and consider my early pacing , albeit for 100 metres, pivotal to Japhet Kipkorir breaking the course record.  Unfortunately at the finish line I was nowhere near Japhet as I had sacrificed my race for his record, or something like that. I have raced Melbourne four times and PB’d every time so if you are ever in Australia around early October I highly recommend it. ( http://melbournemarathon.com.au/events/ )

Starting at the front helps and one year I did make a big effort to try and get to the 1k marker in the lead. I think I got to around 800m’s before realising I had left the field way behind me and all of a sudden I was the one idiot runner you sometimes see at the start of marathons. I could see the cameraman on the BMW bike pointing the camera right at me and I wondered what the controller was screaming at him at that point in time? Probably ‘ignore the bald guy with a beard at the front’ !!  Lesson learned, I slowed and let the lead pack run past and sneaked back into the pack, my tail between my legs. We still joke about Geoffa’s what skins and how they embarrassed a state , needless to say I don’t think white skins are available in 2019, luckily !

Training wise I’m glad to say that finally I did go for a run. (Monday) Albeit not quite 10k , I managed 9.3k and finished in a reasonable state. 5:13min/k average is the best I’ve managed for a few weeks so I’ll take the positive from the run but nowhere need the 4:10min/k average I need for 42.2k in less than three weeks. The Perth Running Festival will be a challenge and I’m putting my sub3 streak on the line. On the bight side the T-train is driving the bus so it will finish sub 3 guaranteed , just need to make sure I’m still on it ! Talking of bus driving perhaps the worse ‘bus driver’ is certainly Jon Pendse. He had arranged to take Jeff and Big Paul to a sub 1:30 half marathon many years ago and sped off at sub 3:45min/k pace. All bus occupants were jettisoned before it even left the car park, epic bus fail ! Last year there was a similar story for the sub3 bus at the Perth Marathon. I had positioned myself about 300m’s from the finish (I was injured) and when the sub3 bus came into view , they were dawdling with very little time to make the final few hundred metres. I made it known in no uncertain times they needed to get a wiggle on and they all looked shocked as they thought it was in the bag. Not so it seems and Mike just made it under the 3 hour mark,  while the back of the bus missed out and Jon also miscalculated, missing out by a few seconds. In Jon’s defence I think he has ran 3hours and xx seconds at least 8 times over his career, it’s a talent apparently?

Bit of a mixed bag today, I’m running albeit very slowly and the Perth Running Festival is coming. This will be an interesting few weeks but that’s the point isn’t it, you play with the cards you are dealt and hope you can bluff your way to a win, what could possibly go wrong ?

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