At last we had a beautiful day for the start of the Canberra long weekend. It was cool at 7.20am when I started my run but warmed up to a lovely temperature. The lake looked stunning with the balloons floating above it and the trees reflecting in it. I just tried not to look at all the debris that had been washed up because of the storms or the greeny brown colour of the water!
I parked my car at Black Mountain peninsula and ran to the museum and back. I then ran a loop round the peninsula while I was waiting for Jen to arrive to join me for part of my long run. In this short part of the run I spotted Mel, Liz, Warwick, Robyn, Robbie and lots of other familiar faces out there.
Jen and I ran round the west basin of the lake and on the way we were joined by Richard. Jen ran about 10km with me and Richard 8km of those. They then headed off to their cars to collect their bikes while I continued on to run the wetlands and east basin end of the lake. We saw Robbie twice more. He was either running extremely fast or he was running loops. I think the former is more likely. While the others were running ahead I also stopped for a quick chat with speedygeoff and Craig who were running in the opposite direction. It was fun to see so many people out there running, cycling, walking and generally enjoying the sunshine.
I was up to Molonglo Reach and had run 28km by the time Richard and Jen rode up on their bikes. When we came to the broken and missing section of the path we headed up to the road and did a bit of a detour. At that stage I lost the others again and ran on my own for quite some time before Jen came to ride with me again for the last 5km. Once we reached the ferry terminal I was up to 34km and as there were only 3km left to reach my car I decided to keep running as I felt ok.
The last little bit of the run felt a bit hard as it was uphill but I made it and ran an extra 600m past the car just to round up the kms!
Total distance: 37km
Time taken: 4hours exactly
Average pace per km: 6:30
Calories burned: 2045
We next headed for Lonsdale Street in the city to enjoy a lovely coffee and something to eat at Debacle as the favoured cafe nearby was absolutely overflowing and there were just no spots for us to sit. At Debacle we sat outside in the sunshine. I chose some lovely banana and walnut toast with ricotta and honey - quite delicious!
Later Mr B and I wandered round exhibition houses checking out bathrooms for ideas as we are about to have our ensuite revamped.
Just before dinner I luxuriated in an epsom salts bath at the recommendation of the lovely man who gave me the best massage yesterday - such heaven. Hopefully I will sleep well tonight and manage to go to Stromlo for a gentle run in the morning.
You saw Mel! I thought she'd given running away and taken up roller derby.
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