Done me dash!
On Sun 15 Mar I slipped-in a race that wasn’t flagged in my upcoming events. I did the Eynesbury dash 10km fun run.
Eynesbury is a new housing estate between Werribee & Melton (in the middle of nowhere). It’s being built around an 1870’s bluestone homestead which has been nicely renovated. John Wood is the face of Eynesbury. You may have seen him on billboards or TV ads promoting it.
Getting there from Werribee was pretty easy, just follow all the signs with John Wood’s mug on it.
The description in the CR calendar said there were 5 & 10k options, both taking in the bush trails in the area. This is what attracted me to the run so you can imagine I was quite peeved when the man said that due to Saturday’s rain it would be run on roads ‘to keep our feet clean’. I for one like getting mud on my shoes & legs & so forth. Sounded like a soft, soft option to me, although I will say I don’t know exactly how muddy it was. Maybe it was like ankle deep or something; dunno.
I was tossing up between 5 & 10k. 10k is as far as I’ve run since last Oct. Having an eye for value I decided on 10k for $20 over 5k for $15.
Soon after the Melton Idol winner’s rendition of Advance Aus Fair (complete with slip-up at the end) was done the 5k runners were away. There were about 80 of them, then 10 min later me & the other ~25 10k runners were off. I started mid-pack doing about 5:30 – 5:45 pace & within 200m was second last! I could tell that I’d soon be passing some of these hares. Sure enough in the first k I passed a couple of girls. One was overweight & was breathing really hard indeed. I thought to myself ‘she’s not gonna enjoy herself today’.
As the run progressed I realised that I was enjoying myself. The road was smooth, flat & wet. The weather was nice & cool. A bit too blowy but otherwise perfect. We were surrounded by gum forest. The atmosphere was nice on this 2x5km loop. Up to about the 6k mark I was regularly self-assessing my breathing and legs & keeping things under control. Probably in the upper end of my aerobic zone. By about the 5k mark I’d passed about 4 people and was about to pass another but he decided to go with my pace. We were shoulder to shoulder for about 12 min. It was good fun. We didn’t say a word but were sharing something. I could hear his breathing was pretty hard which didn’t surprise me, afterall, he was tacking on to my pace (not vice versa). We came to a slight incline near a turn around point & I sensed him dropping off. I accentuated this by picking it up a fraction. There was a tail wind upon the turn around which gave me a further boost. I allowed myself to pick up the pace a bit more as there was only about 3.x k to go. I knew I wouldn’t see that bloke on the course again. I passed another bloke and I saw the aforementioned overweight lady going in the other direction. She was battling hard but still running! I was very impressed. I had an urge to encourage her but thought I’d better not interrupt her concentration. I was worried she’d think I was patronising her or something. I should be more spontaneous & not concern myself with these things. Now she doesn’t know how I admired her effort.
With 2k to go there were 2 more blokes in my sights. It became apparent that the one furthest ahead was going to be passed by the other bloke. I decided to try to catch at least one of them. It took a while but I got the burnt-out one at a turn around point just 80m from the finish. The other one managed a fast finish so there was no catching him. My time was 50:02. I was happy with that. During the run I looked at my watch a couple of times & thought 52 would be OK for today, so very 50 is very nice. No doubt it was a pretty big –ve split, but I don’t have the stats.
Later on while milling around the guy I was shoulder to shoulder with said ‘nice run’. That made me feel good, respected even.
My run of the day award goes to that brave overweight lady who went out too fast but kept going. I hope she wasn’t discouraged by the experience & keeps running!
John Wood was there awarding the prizes. He’s a fat git. Actually not as fat as he looks on telly. Maybe what they say about telly is true, or he’s lost a little weight.Still a fat git though.
The shin didn’t seem to be affected by the run (all on roads). This makes me think maybe I should just put up with & just run through this niggle. We’ll see how it goes as I build to 30 k per week.
My weight is down to about 88kg. Yay.
I might do another unflagged fun run. the Wyndham
------------------
Poor Steve Kilbey had to go to hospital last week for a few days. He’s on the mend, has quit all ‘substances’ & is loving it. Still blogging like a demon. Check out his Sun 15 March entry. Beautiful. Love you man.
Eynesbury is a new housing estate between Werribee & Melton (in the middle of nowhere). It’s being built around an 1870’s bluestone homestead which has been nicely renovated. John Wood is the face of Eynesbury. You may have seen him on billboards or TV ads promoting it.
Getting there from Werribee was pretty easy, just follow all the signs with John Wood’s mug on it.
The description in the CR calendar said there were 5 & 10k options, both taking in the bush trails in the area. This is what attracted me to the run so you can imagine I was quite peeved when the man said that due to Saturday’s rain it would be run on roads ‘to keep our feet clean’. I for one like getting mud on my shoes & legs & so forth. Sounded like a soft, soft option to me, although I will say I don’t know exactly how muddy it was. Maybe it was like ankle deep or something; dunno.
I was tossing up between 5 & 10k. 10k is as far as I’ve run since last Oct. Having an eye for value I decided on 10k for $20 over 5k for $15.
Soon after the Melton Idol winner’s rendition of Advance Aus Fair (complete with slip-up at the end) was done the 5k runners were away. There were about 80 of them, then 10 min later me & the other ~25 10k runners were off. I started mid-pack doing about 5:30 – 5:45 pace & within 200m was second last! I could tell that I’d soon be passing some of these hares. Sure enough in the first k I passed a couple of girls. One was overweight & was breathing really hard indeed. I thought to myself ‘she’s not gonna enjoy herself today’.
As the run progressed I realised that I was enjoying myself. The road was smooth, flat & wet. The weather was nice & cool. A bit too blowy but otherwise perfect. We were surrounded by gum forest. The atmosphere was nice on this 2x5km loop. Up to about the 6k mark I was regularly self-assessing my breathing and legs & keeping things under control. Probably in the upper end of my aerobic zone. By about the 5k mark I’d passed about 4 people and was about to pass another but he decided to go with my pace. We were shoulder to shoulder for about 12 min. It was good fun. We didn’t say a word but were sharing something. I could hear his breathing was pretty hard which didn’t surprise me, afterall, he was tacking on to my pace (not vice versa). We came to a slight incline near a turn around point & I sensed him dropping off. I accentuated this by picking it up a fraction. There was a tail wind upon the turn around which gave me a further boost. I allowed myself to pick up the pace a bit more as there was only about 3.x k to go. I knew I wouldn’t see that bloke on the course again. I passed another bloke and I saw the aforementioned overweight lady going in the other direction. She was battling hard but still running! I was very impressed. I had an urge to encourage her but thought I’d better not interrupt her concentration. I was worried she’d think I was patronising her or something. I should be more spontaneous & not concern myself with these things. Now she doesn’t know how I admired her effort.
With 2k to go there were 2 more blokes in my sights. It became apparent that the one furthest ahead was going to be passed by the other bloke. I decided to try to catch at least one of them. It took a while but I got the burnt-out one at a turn around point just 80m from the finish. The other one managed a fast finish so there was no catching him. My time was 50:02. I was happy with that. During the run I looked at my watch a couple of times & thought 52 would be OK for today, so very 50 is very nice. No doubt it was a pretty big –ve split, but I don’t have the stats.
Later on while milling around the guy I was shoulder to shoulder with said ‘nice run’. That made me feel good, respected even.
My run of the day award goes to that brave overweight lady who went out too fast but kept going. I hope she wasn’t discouraged by the experience & keeps running!
John Wood was there awarding the prizes. He’s a fat git. Actually not as fat as he looks on telly. Maybe what they say about telly is true, or he’s lost a little weight.Still a fat git though.
The shin didn’t seem to be affected by the run (all on roads). This makes me think maybe I should just put up with & just run through this niggle. We’ll see how it goes as I build to 30 k per week.
My weight is down to about 88kg. Yay.
I might do another unflagged fun run. the Wyndham
------------------
Poor Steve Kilbey had to go to hospital last week for a few days. He’s on the mend, has quit all ‘substances’ & is loving it. Still blogging like a demon. Check out his Sun 15 March entry. Beautiful. Love you man.
posted by Also Ran at
2:46 PM
2 Comments:
Bugger, if I had of known about this one I would have entered. As you know, it's just down the road for me as well.
By
Steve's Stuff, at 10:13 PM
Yeah, it was a good run. Nice atmosphere amongst the forest. Pity we didn't use the trails. You would've done well, maybe even won. They haven't posted official results so I don't know what the winning time was.
You doing the Wyndham fun run on the 29th (8 or 15k along the Werribee river)? It's on the CR calendar if you need the details.
By
Also Ran, at 11:09 AM
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