Athelstone 10km

Distance 14.5km [total: minimalist 136.5km: Barefoot 1304km] Week 16


Tuesday, 19-Apr. 4.5km
A short run at the beach, only 4.5km. The tide was high and there was no firm sand to run on and in places the tide was right up to the sea wall. Perseverance under these conditions is not worth it so I came up onto the road to run on the pavement. I spotted another barefoot runner on the pavement further up, maybe there are a few around, now that I have been a regular fixture running up and down the road for over a year now.
I really got some good speed up in the last kilometre and felt like I was flying along. It really feels good to be moving at speed.
The Good Friday race is close now. It looks like it will be the coolest of the days over Easter at only 19C, may even rain. I am still keen to give it a try.

Friday, 22-Apr. 10km
While most people are having a lie in on a day off I was up early preparing for a 10km race over the other side of the city.
This was a free casual run and I said to myself if I woke up today to the sound of lashing rain I would give it a miss and just stay in bed myself.
At 6am I looked outside and it was dry so I had some breakfast and threw some things together and set off at 7am.
The roads were pretty empty at that time of the morning which made the travelling quick and easy.

Athelstone is in the Adelaide foothills and as I approached I could see the low cloud over the hills.
The roads were wet from earlier rain and as I got closer to the start point fine drizzle coated my windscreen.
I got there with 30 minutes to kill so had a wander around as all the runners were looking very professional and limbering up.
It's all looking very technical there days, gel packs, belts with drink bottles on, wet weather gear and there's me shorts and a t-shirt and that's it.
There were 2 courses to chose from, the River Flats course or the more challenging hilly route. Stick to the River run as the hill run would be gravel, wet gravel at that.
10 minutes before setting off it was raining steadily. Lets see if I am any better at running in the wet these days.
The course went along some small back streets before following the linear park along the River Torrens in a westerly direction.
One thing I learned was to avoid running on the white line markings in the middle of the path, they were as slippery as a banana peel when wet.
The course was far from flat, it was more undulating, lots of ups and downs. The rain held off for the first half of the run but poured down over the second 5km, I was soaked.
I had been aiming to see if I could run the course in under 1 hour and by the time I got back to the start point and stopped my watch I recorded a time of 51m 17.9s wow that was great, very pleased with that. If it had been dry I think I could have managed under 50 minutes.
I'll mark this down as another race I'll have to do next year.

Saturday, 23-Apr. 0km
I noticed that the day after my 10km run that I had a bit of soreness on the pad of the right foot. I gave it a thorough clean to look for possible puncture points where some irritant may have entered.
There was a bit of wear and tear on the forefoot, probably needed a few days to rebuild after a race, but didn't see anything that indicated I'd stood on a sharp object.

Neil