The Long and Dusty Trail!

Phew, maybe I was out in sympathy with the six footers this morning but I managed all of my run on the hills and it was hard, hot and slow. I met up with Mike, Graeme, Chris, Roy, Nadine and Brett at the War Memorial carpark and we walked to our starting points on Mt Ainslie.

There we dispersed in two different directions, the short course and the long. I ran with Nadine, Roy and Brett and we ran our usual course up and over to the highway and back (about 18km) then Roy and I ran on to the Masters' Handicap course. Nadine caught up with us there as she had detoured to stock up on water (a wise decision as the weather was humid and we became dehydrated very quickly). She ran round the whole of that loop while Roy and I turned round and ran back past the war memorial again to restock on our water.

At this point Roy stopped but I still had 8km to go so ran back out over Mt Ainslie again on my own sighting Nadine on her return. I also spotted an enormous lizard (?) - a really big one covering a quarter of the track, and lots and lots of kangaroos everywhere no doubt looking hopefully for water. It has been threatening rain all day but not a drop has fallen. The clouds are becoming blacker and blacker outside now though and the wind has picked up so any minute now??

I'm wondering how my six foot tracker friends have gone today. I thought of them a lot this morning on my dusty run imagining how much tougher their run would be and hoping that they had a great day for it after so much training.

I eventually completed my scheduled run and it took nearly four hours - oh dear, it was tough and slow but at least it's done! It was great to have company for most of the way. Roy waited for me while I finished my last 8km and we enjoyed a beautiful coffee afterwards.

Total distance: 34km
Time taken: 3:56:06
Average pace per km: 6:56
Calories burned: 1975