Easy(ish) Monday and Year in Review

Out at lunch feeling pretty good which was surprising given yesterday's run. Caught up with English Andy, the Saint, MC and Kanser and ran the usual route. Out in 4:30s and back picking it up all the way so the last 3km was run in 12:00. Finished the 14.71km in 1:03:00 (4:17s). Another beautiful day but pretty breezy. The Saint was saying that Shelley and potentially Dent and Youcef will be running the State 5km in Jan which should make it a cracker of a race. Hope they have seeded races otherwise I'll be trying to avoid being lapped twice.

Year in Review:

Started with the achilles injury which was probably a blessing in disguise. Really concentrated on getting fit for the State 10km. This season I seemed to peak for races very well but run the ones in-between pretty averagely - unlike last season where I was very consistent all the way through but without any stand-out runs.

Best 3 races:

1. JPMorgan (Sydney) - probably my best race since the Northern X-Country Championships in 1989.
2. City to Surf - if only for getting the monkey off my back and being able to run well on a hilly course. I'm usually crap on hills.
3. State 10km - finally cracking 33 mins and by a fair margin.

Difficult to exclude State 3km from the top 3 given the sudden turn-around in form and the good PB, but in the end the others were more important. Also seemed to run well at each of the ANSW events. Not sure whether this is due to the atmosphere, the fact that the competition is generally stronger or that they aren't run at some ungodly hour in the morning.

Worst 3 races:

1. Minimosmarathon. Slowest 10km in 2 years. Bloody awful course (see above re: hills). And the fact that you have to run around Mosman. Still don't forget heading the wrong way at one point because the marshall was collecting her morning latte. I'd rather run the Minirootyhillmarathon.
2. Gold Coast Half. Really thought I was on for a big PB in this one. I blamed it on the wind but that didn't seem to affect Dave Sweeney.
3. Coolrunning 5km end of October (if it counts as a race), if not Lane Cove 10km a week later. Smashed by Muz on both occasions. Really need to do something about my 5km PB.

The Year ahead:

Will be dominated by the marathon in July. Everything will be viewed as a build up to that. The thing this year has taught me is to view races in the scheme of current training and stop trying to run a PB every time. Also very much looking forward to Six Foot Track. Don't want to miss the NSW Long Course and Short Course X-Country Champs this year either. Despite the hills.

My votes for HuRTS performances of the year:

1. Best performance: Tucks and his NSW Long Course X-Country race. I don't know about the marathon yet so can't assess how good his 2:29 in Canberra was. In absolute terms, Steve's 14:33 over 5km would win but you have to take into account relative ability.
2. Improver of the Year: Steve. Who else. It's enjoyable to look back over the blog and see how he used to struggle back in June.
3. Sergio award. Serg. It's no done thing for next year though. Having said that, when it comes to one-on-one competition, you wouldn't bet against him. His comeback in the North Head 10km was great as was his run in the X-Country relays.

Ones to watch for next year:

1. Muz - now he's discovered that you can run on the weekend, and that you can run for 2 hours, he's going to be dangerous. Time for the rest of us to step up training.
2. Dicky H - he improves so quickly off short blocks of high intensity training so it'll be interesting to see how far he can get off a sustained programme which he should have up to Six Foot Track.
3. Kanser - so long as he stays injury free (a big ask given his current regime) I have a feeling he'll finally crack the marathon in July if he runs it. No more running obscure marathons in far flung places, he'll be against a large number of his training partners in the event he loves most with no excuses.