Usual run-of-the-mill stuff, if you'll pardon the pun  Tuesday night out with Peter, as Monday I  was at the show and was stuffed already by the time I got home.  We did Mountain View (you'll get sick of reading it before I get sick of running it) and once again I sucked, being dropped by P like a bag of spuds.  The run is here.

This is what the descent down one of the steep parts of the hill looks like from the top.  The photo doesn't really do it justice.

Thursday night at Caboolture Road Runners we ran two sets of four reps of two minutes.  That's sixteen minutes of fast running.  Once again, I felt old and slow and fat.  I think my core is weak and that has me swishing from side to side like a washing machine, or Humphrey B Bear hula dancing.  Gotta work on that.  The run is here.

Sunday Morning's run with Peter was interesting.  I was feeling old and fat and slow, he must have been feeling great because he bolted like a startled colt and I was struggling in his wake the whole way.  On the run up to the Jack Ferris lookout he had stopped and was swigging from his bottle when I eventually trundled to the top.  The day was perfect, I should have taken a shot of Tibro when we arrived rather than later from Jack Ferris, it was all suffused with golden light and looked like a postcard.

Ten kilometres as P had to pick up #2 son from Hamilton.  I heaved a sigh of relief, I would have had a heart attack trying to keep up any longer.  The run is here.

On Saturday Night I had the absolute pleasure of running in the Wild Horse at Night race with my son Cameron.  Early on in the race he rolled his ankle a little as it was rutted and dried mud: he kept going and the ankle only ached a bit during the run, but got a bit more sore as it cooled down.  His pacing was superb, we ran 4 to 4.2 kilometres for every 30 minute split, stopping then to have a drink and a couple of lollies and make sure we were going OK.  After the race we sat down with a cup of hot soup, then a warm drink (mocha for me, hot chocolate for him) and waited for the girls to arrive.  We finished off the evening with a walk to the top of Wildhorse Mountain.  It's great having a fit family, we'd miss out on so much if we were stuck in front of the television all of the time.

The GPS plot of our race is here.

Thursday's speedwork was a Minute Valley session:  Interspersed with 60 second rest breaks, run 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4 minute efforts.  I hurt but I didn't fade across the session - for the last and the first I managed around 900 metres.

Stuffed afterwards.

Map here.

As I suspected, hills.  I managed three four sets of 100, 200, and 300 metres up the hill, each rep followed by a jog return.  I try hard on the way up, but I have to walk for the first fifty on the way back down, before commencing a really slow jog.  I like hills, but usually I'm just trying to make it to the top without stopping, not busting a gut trying to race up.

Tonight's run is here.

Last night's run was the old faithful Mountain View.  My legs were heavy from Sunday morning's run but I felt strong.  Here's a link to the GPS trace.

557 metres of gain in 12.4km.  Given that it's an out-and-back course, that's an average incline of 9%.  Of course, the worst bits are much steeper, and there are some flattish bits along the top.

Tonight I'm doing hill repeats with South Pine Striders.  It's going to be a big week of hills, it seems.

This morning's run was nearly thirty km of hills.  I'm glad it's still nominally winter, it was warming up by the end.  I managed to leave home with an almost flat GPS and captured less than half of the run.  Here's a link to the map of the run on MapMyRun.

It was very pretty out there this morning.  I got to a nice elevation above Dayboro, running up the Dayboro - Mt Mee road.  Spoke to lots of cyclists, they were moaning about the hill.  It's a lot shallower than Mountain View, I tell ya.

So, in two and a half months Peter, Steve, Sean, and I will be heading over to Queenstown for a week of running, walking, climbing, and relaxing.  Really looking forward to going, very grateful that my beautiful wife has encouraged me to take a trip, and quite nervous to be honest.  I'm going to ramp up the hill training again to get the legs ready for the mountainous countryside in the Queenstown region: twice a week to Mountain View or Thornhill Chase.

There you have it.  my First Blog Post.  I'll have to start running with my phone so I can document some of the scenery on my training runs, like the Koalas I've seen in the last two weeks, or Monday's beautiful sunset.