Hanging Rock 10k

It was a lovely sunny morning at Hanging Rock with about 500 people lining up at the 10k start line on the horse racing track. Although planning to run in a pair of Vibram Sprints I was unable to tie the timing chip on with the small ties that were supplied so I ended up running in my Mizuno Wave Ronins.

The course itself had two short stretches of sealed road with the rest consisting of open paddock, the grass horse track and a dirt trail around the base of the rock. A very enjoyable course with a nice mixture of surfaces, it sure beat the standard 100% road courses in Melbourne.

At the start I managed to get a great spot right up on the start line, in fact there was a noticable lack of pushing to front. This led to a cruisy start with no josteling, dodging and weaving for the first two kms :)

I hit the 5 km mark at 21 minutes and was feeling great for a sub 45 and at about that point I hooked up with this guy who was travelling at a nice steady pace. The plan was to run with him to the end and the group of 15 or so runners behind us seemed to have the same plan.

Another 1500 metres on and my plan fell apart when I started getting some gastric action happening and had to slow down for fear of blowing chunder. Once I got going again I was about 50m behind that pack and had no hope of catching them especially after another gagging episode another 800m down the road. I managed to pick up my pace again for the last km or so and finished with a respectable 45:41, which was about 4 minutes slower than what was possible due to the untimely gagging.

There was a little tightness in the hammies on Saturday afternoon but that was pretty much gone by Sunday morning. After a little sleep in I put the VFF Sprints on and headed off for a cruisy 29k run. All went well untill about 2:30 into the run. By that stage I got it into my mind that I wanted food and my water had run out with nowhere nearby to refill. Over the next 50 minutes or so I struggled along and had to keep motivating myself to continue. Something I haven't had to do for some time. Next week I'll take some money with my and/or food and more fluid!

Over all I felt pretty good Monday morning with slightly sore thighs and a little tenderness in my left heel. Went for a nice 10k recovery run at lunch time and all feels exceedingly well.

There is no more pain in my Plantar fascii and the achilles pain is just about gone, certainly it is manageable. My calves and feet feel so much stronger since I started wearing Vibrams - unbelievable!