Personal bests

I absolutely smashed my 5km pb two weeks back, taking it from 22:43 down to 21:10.5. While it wasn't the sub-20 I was challenged to do, it shows a couple of things :-

• that goal is within reach
• I'm probably capable of more than I allow myself to believe

It was an ugly run though, very cold (for Brisbane). I ran at my threshold for the whole thing, which is not my usual strategy, and I started to feel sick with about 400m to go. I fumbled stopping my Garmin at the finish, which meant that while I knew my time was better than 21:30, I didn't know how much better.

BRRC 5km

I did not recover very well from this run. My legs were sacks of wet sand for about a week, and I've been struggling with niggles and losing consistency since. I really felt fatigued afterward, which I guess shows how much I pushed myself. Nevertheless, I'm happy with the result, and look forward to bettering (but maybe not for a few months). I'll be resetting my usual 5k expectations to sub 23:00 though. That seems reasonable now.

Anyway, after a few weeks of struggling to get out and do as much stuff as I've wanted, and an extremely hectic working environment, I lined up at the Brisbane Marathon 10km yesterday morning. I hadn't really been looking forward to the run, but luckily my sister-in-law was running as well, and her enthusiasm got me to the race precinct, where the atmosphere of the start line got me pretty pumped.

I'd started to settle back into an sub 50:00 run in my head, and lined up with the 50 minute pacer... who I stuck with for the first km, and then left behind. The Brisbane Marathon 10km course is a winding, twisty affair, with a couple of short but rather steep climbs. There are a few hills through the city that are allegedly quite high, but must be relatively gradual as they are *relatively* manageable.

It's the climb up from the river to the Storey Bridge that's the killer. It's not long but it hurts. Then there's a long long long down hill section from the bridge back to the other side of the river. It's a tough course. Looking at the Strava activity, the elevation data is all sorts of messed up.

Brisbane Marathon Festival 10km

I had another great run, a 15 second PB. But the difference in the courses was enormous - I have no idea if this is a valid comparison, but using the "Grade Adjusted Pace" times from Strava would make it a 44:35 run, which would have been a huge PB, of over 2 minutes.

Well, it's been a big few weeks of resetting expectations for me. I am pretty certain I will attempt the 2018 Canberra Marathon, so it's back to building a base up until Christmas, when the training will start in earnest.