Shocktober

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

There’s nothing like a funeral to focus your thoughts. When the deceased also happens to have been an elite sportsman (he declined a chance to represent Australia at rugby union although his nephew later became a much-capped and famous national representative), one’s thoughts tend to focus likewise on sport. When one also happens to be seated next to a champion athlete and probable future Olympian (OK so she is my niece and I may be biased, but she is a junior national rep with a focus on Rio 2016), then there’s little choice once the funeral and wake are over to swap suit for shorts and head to the hills for some serious mountain climbing. Well, actually I headed to the treadmill, which is probably worse, but a mountain climb it was.

Now my efforts were of course pretty insignificant compared to some of the elite company I was in today (even if some of them were deceased), but I tell you this: there are few better feelings than a tough run well completed and done above expectations. And on the comeback trail from injury (and isn’t it annoying – at least for those of you old enough to understand – how much longer it takes to recover from injury when there’s a “5” in front of your age?) a good run is twice as welcome.

I must say however I was a little horrified to check my spreadsheet afterwards and discovered it has been eight weeks since my last serious hill session, so this was long overdue.

The long and the short of it was that I covered 9.67 kilometres in the allocated hour on a mountain climb program with the steepest section at 9% and an average across the hour of 5.2%. And it was tough. I mean really keeping me honest tough. Not quite lung-busting, jelly-legs and vomit tough, but one of the tougher runs I’ve completed this year. And while there isn’t much time left before the P2P, I am feeling somewhat more confident now that I’m properly back into training and having at least one tough hill climb completed.

And just to help focus on the fact that I can complete the tough events, I dug around in my wife’s computer and found this photo she took of me enjoying my first post-marathon beer a little while back.

Onwards and er, upwards.

Misc

9.67km 60mins 5.2% average gradient

YTD: 1,161.7km