At the moment, the PRB and I are sitting in a motel room (or the elaborately described “one bedroom family suite”) in Albury, in a stand-off about whether to eat dinner or not. The promised broadband internet connection is weak and lacking, thus I expect that this shall be it for the evening.

I am looking forward to the Nail Can Hill Run (11.4km) tomorrow greatly, as my exercise has been so significantly disrupted over the last few weeks with illness and ‘life’. (Life is good).

Bob and I head off on Thursday for a 5 ½ week trip to Central and Eastern Europe. We are looking forward to it, however there is so much to do, and there the list barely seems to get any smaller despite seemingly to be going flat chat the whole time.

Bob (along with the wonderful Rad), will be competing in the World Duathlon Championships, in Györ, Hungary on Sunday, 20 May. The 10km run, 40km Cycle and 5km run will be at the end of our 9 day stay in Györ, however I expect that it shall take a while to recover from the over 40 hour journey that takes it shall take for us to travel from Canberra to Hungary, via Sydney, Bangkok, London, and Vienna. I expect to be stuffed by the time we arrive! (Maybe I should have shelled out for those air tickets instead of insisting on taking the ACTION Bus the whole way).

Bob will be in the M60-64 year old category for the first time, and Rad will, amazingly, be one of the few competitors in the M80-84 age group! What an inspiration!

Running

I finally managed to get in and see my doctor last week – after a nearly three week wait. Of course, by then, the few significant health conditions had worsened, changed and, finally, ameliorated . . . ensuring that I was in pretty good nick by the time that bounced into his office. I’m sure that I’ll live – and am just pleased to be more or less without pain. My heart rate was recorded as being dramatically low the week before, (30-35 bpm standing, 18-24 bpm sitting), and he regarded this with great interest. No monitoring can be done immediately, however if I am aware of it in future then I have a referral to a hospital for it to be captured immediately. I would love to think that my low resting heart rate was due to a level of fitness higher than that of Lance Armstrong or Miguel Indurain, yet, alas, I know that this is not the case, and is at least 20 bpm too low, even for me.

Running. OK, I’m getting there!

After a pretty poor time health wise, I stubbornly turned up to Customs 5k on Friday, 13 April and did a surprisingly swift 27:05 (5:25 min/km pace). The 10 days enforced break obviously did me good. The Marathon Eve 10k the following day was more marginal, and I wasn’t at all sure that I was able to make it to the starting line. Despite significant pain, I did (after all I paid me money, and was going to take me chances). I chatted a bit much at the start, being delighted to see many Cool Runners from Canberra and much further a field.

It wasn’t comfortable running, but I stuck at it, on the round and around 2 little and 3 big lap course. Fading considerably, I was lifted at every turn by the cheers of “Go Cool Runner”, and “C’Mon Carolyne”. I had to finish! Just as I started my third lap, I heard that Bob was finishing, and looking at my watch was thrilled to see a time well under 42 minutes for him. After a gruelling long cycle that morning, his 41:20 was a good result for an old bloke.

I wasn’t smiling much, but finished in 56:59 by my watch (no problems with the 57:01 official), or 5:41 min/km. I was stuffed though!!!!

A short time was spent catching up with Aki, the PRB and others before heading home for an early-ish night and the plan to cycle down to watch the marathon early the next morning.

Ha! I didn’t even turn over to wake up until some of the last of the 50km runners were coming into the final straight! So much for the best laid plans of mice and ducks! Ha.1

I wasn’t feeling very good though.