Sunday, August 16, 2009

Long Run - Tourist Attraction

Yesterday midday my wife was out getting her hair done and my son was staying over with his grandparents. This meant I had a window of around 3 hours so I decided to shift Sunday's long run to Saturday. This turned out to be a good idea as the rain stopped.

Last week's long run I felt was done a bit fast (16.43km @ 5:15min/km) so for this one really focused on keeping it slow and easy. To make sure added a couple of "judder bars" - One Tree Hill and Mt Eden. Worked quite well too the hills weren't too bad with a slower pace.

This is the longest I've ever run in one go before so somewhat of a milestone. Got a bit ragged towards the end I suspect I was starting to hit the wall just a little.

26.18km / 2:29:37 / 5:45 min/km.



Elevation:


Lots of interesting scenery on this run. Notably at about the 7.5km mark is Acacia cottage - Auckland's oldest surviving building - from about 1841 moved to Cornwall park in 1920.


Photo by therebmeister

Listened to music on this run and had some U2 from the "Joshua Tree" album playing when I was going round Cornwall Park. Very fitting.

Second half of the run was a little surreal. At the top of Mt Eden about 17km in I was asked to pose for a photo with some tourists from India. Maybe they needed evidence for someone mad enough doing the run up to the top? Oh well :)

I don't think I could tackle this sort of course every week. The calves wouldn't like it all that much.

Sunday will be doing Saturday's run of 7 miles at PMP. That should be 'interesting' - legs don't feel all that bad but will be doing something flat.