Tour De Mountain

Started at 6:00 am towards the back of the early start pack.
One of my remarks as I travelled towards Isaacs Ridge, was that it was going to be a long day.
It turned out to be the slowest TdM that I had run.

My excuse is that since the last leg of the Triple tri, I had not done much training.
No 10km runs 2 or 3 times a week that preceded the Triple-Tri.
Only the regular runs over 5km, 6km, etc, that are the distance of most of the lunchtime runs.

That is now my resolve, to get out more, and over longer distances, while of course keeping up with the shorter runs.

Up Isaacs Ridge tried to keep jogging but eventually decided that walking would be just as fast.
Then caught a young lady slightly ahead of me and we talked about not walking up Wanniassa Hills or Mt Taylor, little did we know what lay ahead.

Then slowly and surely I forged ahead of that young lass, and thought I must have been truly warmed up.
Then going down the rocky slope before the first relay change, there was a guy and his daughter going for a walk in the opposite direction, saying that they were nearly at the top.
I remarked that there were some good views waining for them.

At the relay change point, George gave me some encouragement, then I picked up some water at the drink station which was on the southern side of the road.

Just before the right hand turn to head up wanniassa Hills, Dr Fleuro (from the 6:30am start) came roaring past. I was asked to pass onto one of the following runners, that he was a "Silly Duffer".

It turned out that Dr Fleoro had tunrned up one of the side streets in Isaacs, and the following runner had called out that the good Dr had taken a wrong turn.

Anyways, just after this Dr Fleuro took a wrong track, and ended up in a fenced enclosure, that he ducked through the wire fence to get onto the right track.

Over the Hills, in just that 9 minutes, 9 runners passed me.

There were then a trail of runners passing from there to the top of Mt Taylor.

Over Athlon Drive, care was needed to avoid the cars travelling at speed, and they weren't going to slow, even for a tired runner.

Norma, who I thought was in front all the way, caught me towards the top of Mt Taylor, and powered away down Beasley St to finish a few minutes in front.

Again the last road crossing was fraught with the danger of fast travelling cars.

The race was Dr Fleoru's third win, and Emma Murray won the Ladies division, both in new course records, while I balanced out the average overall times, as already alluded to.
Emma's record was something in the order of 3 minutes.

Until Next Time