ONLY ONE MORE WEEK

The days are ticking by and I am starting to feel the pressure of the race... This is the last week of real training and then it's taper week. I'm too old to take 2 weeks of taper, I feel I'll just get unfit... So how has this last week of training gone?

Let us start with Saturday 29 September, I had thought about popping out to Stellenbosch to run a 12km trail race... It was raining and the early morning didn't called for the bed... Dawn would have joined me if the weather had played ball and we could have spent the morning on the wine farms. Would have been fun, but that will have to wait for another week. Instead I headed out from home up the Green Belts on the left side taking me to the top of Southern Cross and Rhodes Drive. Now the forest and the mountain start the other side of Rhodes drive and I set myself up for a couple of single track intervals!!! The intervals were about 1.35km long taking me between 5:16 and 5:52 (call it down and up) I did 5 with 60 sec break before headed home down the other Green Belts, great session.

We had friends round for a braai that evening and I talked myself into running the half on the Sunday and organised a lift with them... Sunday was just a solid tempo run and a chance to steal a few seconds in my quest to bring down my average time for a half... Mission accomplished!

Monday started the week with and easy run up to the Block House... Easy well I didn't hammer it so the 500+m of climb did feel easy.

Good think Monday was easy, because Tuesday was not and we hit the track for a last real work out: 800m hard I was running them 2:35 - 2:38, here is the really kicker, 30 sec rest then 200m fast!!! I'm not that fast any more and was running 33s - 34s while the youngsters were knocking on the 30sec door!!! Then it was a 90 sec walk back to the start... 5 was enough for the day.

Wednesday was just a little forest and road run on about 12km before last nights hill session. Now as Coach I take my brief from the boy and they want to get fast this summer, the strength and endurance of the winter is over and they now want to run a quick 10km before we build for Oceans next year... So short hills was on the cards, call it 60sec, but we normally reach the speed bump in 55ish sec and turn there!

I started easy and ran on the single track next to the road letting Richard get away. Then after 4 reps I said to Mark, let's chase him down...I moved onto the road and start to run hard up and hard down, no rest for the wicked!  I lapped Mark on number 10 and if we were running 11 I might have had Richard... but that was not to be, 10 was enough for the day...

I don't know what week weekend holds, it only starts tomorrow!!!