Hoonis Australis

Distance 54km [total: minimalist 285.6km: Barefoot 3912.5km] Week42

Monday, 22-Oct. 11.5km

Ah, spring time and as I'm running back from West Beach, along the beach path I hear the first cry of The Hoon. The Hoon is the cousin of the Neanderthal, it survived and thrived in Australia's isolated environment due to lack of predators and a temperate climate.
The cry of "Get some fucking shoes on" as it speeded by was a sign of Spring's arrival. I tried to communicate with the Hoon by using sign language consisting of finger gestures but all this seemed to do was agitate the poor creature.
I anticipate if we get a warm summer that great herds of Hoons will gather at prominent beachside locations for their preening rituals, I shall need to prepare my communication technique just in case I need to negotiate my way past them.
The run today had a fast outbound leg and a more subdued end as I ran along the soft sand that was quite hard to get any decent speed along.

Thursday, 24-Oct, 11.5km.

A cool change came in today, the southerly wind is here again and I'm running into it and feeling pretty darn good. I just don't get that tiredness I used to get when wearing shoes. Once again I ran down to the boardwalk at West Beach, had a rest for a minuted then headed back, this time with a tailwind. There was some firmer sand on the beach today so I did a short 2km timed section from jetty to jetty and I recorded my fastest ever time, all be it wind assisted, I did a time of 9:09m. I'm hoping all these faster times are a sign that I can do a sub 20 minute for the Beach Bash next year.

Saturday, 26-Oct. 25km.

I managed another long one but was out of steam during the last kilometre again and walked it back through the incoming tide. The weather was fantastic, starting a bit cloudy but this burnt off after an hour and revealed a blue sky. The southerly breeze kept the temperature down but not enough to chill me. The feet began to get a bit sore in the last 5km and I didn't feel like I was going very fast, but, mainly I'm trying to build endurance and if I can keep doing runs of this length then I should be ok.

Sunday, 27-Oct. 6km.

Arrgghh, calf tightness!!! I embarked on my usual loop of the lake on a beautiful sunny Sunday morning. At around the 2km point I felt a bit of pain in the calf so I slowed up and relaxed and it went away. Now I was alerted to it and I had to make the decision if I go on my longer loop or opt for the shorter route. I decided that there was no point being a hero and as with all tightness, it always feels better when warm then gets worse when you stop and I didn't want to be further away from my car than is necessary. It started to tighten again around 1km from the end so I walked that last stretch.
I went to the gym after but didn't do any calf exercises and definitely didn't stretch. When I got home I went on my roller for a while and shall continue to do that through the day.