Been busy

CJ, the rain bringer, came up to Noosa bearing gifts for absent friends.



This weekend was the Noosa Half Mary, my duties included pacing the 1:40 crew. Katy remained back in Brizzy to work on her Uni assignments, guide our puppies astray and whatever she does when I'm not around.

But let me take a step back here ...

Wednesday we made our annual trip to the Ekka, think Royal Show, think State Fair ... the big discovery was finding out how they make those bulls so big ... IT'S ALL AIR ... we caught one getting pumped up and here is the photo to prove it.



and while we were there, we concentrated on working out what camper van we would get when we win the lottery.



Also during the week, with the inspiration of Matt and his setting up of our google group we have been able to keep our little group of more than 60 runners together. This was something Tesso was doing before she defected to Sydney (Come back Tesso, we need you).

so getting back to the half mary today .....

The first KM marker was a little further back, making our time about 30 seconds slow. This meant we were off pace early on, so I pushed through and passed a number of runners ahead running something in the 4:30s. Staying at this pace, we got ahead and landed the first half about 1 minute ahead of time. I really enjoyed yelling out and encouraging Mat, Salli, Celeste, Angie, Doug, Robbie, Eddie err Rob, Glenno, Liz, Dan, Chris, Jamesy, Keith, Craig, Carrie, Reg, John, ... and as many as I could remember as we passed on the turns. I was also doing my best to calculate my splits... 4:44 by 5 km is 5 times 4 seconds for 20 seconds add the 3 forties to get two minutes plus the 2 carry over for one twenty with the other twenty for forty and then the 4 minutes by five is twenty for twenty-two and one and forty equal to twenty three plus twenty seconds or is that forty, no it is twenty plus the one twenty so it must be forty and adds up to twenty three forty which we did around 30 seconds under, so phew that's ok, oops, we are now up to six K which is about another 4:44 so ... ummm ... "hey, Brad how are we doing?" ...

... I spend a lot of my runs doing maths.

and at the half way turn, I enjoyed being joined by a guy running right on my shoulder (not sure where he came from)... he wanted to do exactly what I was doing. I talked to him about breathing, releasing tension and monitoring his every move ..... we synched stride for stride to about the 18k mark and the I let him go ... I slowed the last 2 km, looking for whomever else I could get under the 1:40 ... my nameless buddy landed with a 1:39:30 and I congratulated him on his run. That, for me, is what pacing is all about. he was rapt and we shook hands. His appreciation made me proud for helping him.

Shortly after the run, I headed out for another solo hour to achieve my long run 2 hours 40 minutes, holding 5 min/km as the temperature dropped. I encouraged the end of the field dude from South Africa as he went about his business. It struck me how happy he was to be out there; his smile was as big as anyone on the day. While a few may have missed the expectations of improved times and felt discouraged by this, it's that big smile I like to remember