Saturday 14 April 2018

A morning well spent

A bit of a personal step forward for me today. I went for a pretty good run.

I had a bit of time today between coaching a run session and meeting up with some athletes and so I thought I would use the time to go for a bit of a run. Whenever I go running I seem to be up against it time wise and so the runs always seem a bit rushed. This morning though I happened to have plenty of time and so I was able to run for as long as I wanted.

Up until now the longest run I have been for this year has been 11km so I originally set myself the target or running for 60 minutes, which would have got me closer to 13km. However, as I got going I decided I was probably capable of running a bit further than that. I didn't want to go crazy and attempt a 90 minute run or anything like that, I thought that would probably result in fiery ball of failure, but 70 minutes felt possible and so that is what I ended up going for.

And it ended up going great.

Not only was the run the longest I have done this year (a bit over 15km), it also ended up being one of the quickest. I wasn't deliberately chasing a pace, it just ended being what it was, but I was quite happy with the average pace I ended up with. It was a nice long, mostly enjoyable run on an absolutely perfect autumn morning. Not a bad way to start the day at all.



Other than running for 70 minutes the other thing I spent a lot of time doing this morning was tracking Dr Gary Couanis at the Liuzhou 70.3. As I wrote about last night, Gary was over in China chasing one of the Kona slots on offer at there. There weren't a lot of spots on offer and to get one Gary pretty much had to win the 40 - 44 year old category, a tough ask at any race. However, Gary was up to the challenge and he ended up executing an almost flawless race and romping away with the AG win by nearly 15 minutes. For a long time Gary has had the talent and the ability to get to Kona, but bad luck and bad timing has prevented him from doing so. This win has earned Gary his shot at Kona, which is a dream he has been chasing for a long time.

I couldn't be more happy for him.

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