It's Now or Never!

Indeed, this is my last opportunity to update my blog before "leaving on a jet plane" tomorrow. Yes, one more sleep and then my daughter and I head to Rome where Mr B will meet us and drive us to our destinations, Mandy to Perugia to a friend for a few days before joining us and Mr B and I to Rimini where we stay until after the duathlon next weekend. I think I have almost packed - weighing the bag will be interesting. I have to leave some weight and space for the return trip!!

Running over the past couple of weeks has been a bit intermittent. I seem to have heaps of interruptions. However, it has included a good 13km run with Ewen where I found $20 on the return lap (woo hoo) and speedygeoff's bi-weekly training sessions although I did miss last Thursday's group as I managed to squeeze in a hair appointment to have my hair cut ultra short ready for summer!! Besides it's so much less trouble short!

Last Sunday was the Canberra Times Fun Run - not a very successful result. The weather was pretty bleak after a gorgeous day on the Saturday. Overnight there were huge flashes of lightning and the heavens opened. In the morning the rain had stopped although it fell heavily just prior to the start of the race. Rach drove Marg and I to the start and took the car to the finish which was fantastic except that it didn't go quite as well as planned. For a start I left my ipod in the car which meant running without music. That felt strange for a while as I'm not used to hearing myself breathe so loudly for 10km but the advantage was that I could hear other people breathe too and acknowledge others along the way. After being caught in the rain and wind towards the finish, to add insult to injury a number of walkers spread across the track up to seven abreast in front of me, causing several runners to have to detour up the slippery muddy bank to avoid them and in my case this definitely meant walking for a bit as I was sliding in the mud - not happy! However, on a positive note, it was great to catch up with so many people who come out of the woodwork annually for that event and there were heaps of familiar faces. At the end I met up with Marg and we then searched for our driver. We became cold very quickly and it took a very long time to meet up with Rach again. We were shivering and PRB came to my rescue with his jumper which helped a lot - lovely man. No PB for me this year, in fact I ran nearly a minute slower than last year but next year will be better and over all it was a good day.

Total distance: 10km
Time taken: 55:29
Average pace per km: 5:30

This morning I ran a final run before leaving tomorrow. I had heavy legs from an exhausting week and felt every step of the 10km. However, I did listen to my music before packing my ipod. Now I'm off to repack and weigh that suitcase. I will be blogging when possible but from now on my titles will be travel related - farewell for now, Elvis. There are heaps more song titles but I will go with the flow. Back soon my friends!!