September...

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Training continues to go well. My first week yielded 38km of hill climbing with no niggles or soreness to speak of. In fact I am beginning to wonder if the hill work is actually doing my feet and knees a favour. Hill climb race walking is bloody tough on the toes especially, and these little blighters were giving me the heebies prior to commencing this training, but are thus far trouble-free.

Both my parents suffered from osteo-arthritis and swore that activity "lubricated" the affected joints and kept them going, so I guess it could well be doing me more good than harm also. And the knees certainly seem happy enough - no jarring from running, and the hill climbing does wonders for muscle tone, thus further reducing stress.

Only into my second week but have hit my first "plateau", with my 60 minute sessions being too bloody tough to consider ramping them up quite yet. But no matter, I can feeling it doing me wonders.

Today I drove the race route to suss out the tricky bits. It's basically a race of two halves, with the first 10 kms very manageable, but thereafter you're on the mountain proper and it gets very arduous indeed at times. Kilometres 16 - 20 are utter bastards, at gradients of 9 - 10%, and only a slight levelling off for the final 1.4 km. So I'm under no illusions that this will be incredibly hard to accomplish in a good time (whatever that may be).

The race is also infamous for being extremely windy on the upper slopes. Some years it is so strong they abandon the climb altogether and turn it into an out and back course, which rather defeats the purpose really. Today on the summit I was greeted with 70kmh winds, gusting much higher, which would be virtually impossible to race in I would think. Hopefully race day will be less dramatic.

Ironically, someone gave me a copy of Anthony Hopkin's "The Fastest Indian" (great flick). Very inspiring, but I was exceedingly jealous of those dead flat salt plains.

Well I say that, but really I love hills. No really I do. Hey stop that.... no I don't want to go in the van again..............