Double or Nothing

Friday-Rest Day

Saturday
800m- 6th 2:00.15 Sydney Olympic Park

Busy day, early start dragging Akira out for a bike ride whilst watching 2 of the Tiger squad racing Striders 10km at Manly. Both had blinders running faster than I expected. Even Akira has improved alot since Tuesday, he actually seems more interested in going fast than skidding the back wheel. Highlight though was watching Kirsten and the Highnam kids on volunteer duties, I've never seen so many runners accept drinks at the 9.9km mark of a 10km race. Lucrative sales careers ahead and comfortable resort style retirement life for mum and dad :-)

Raced off to meet Aunty Emma, Millie and Koji at Trovatino's for brekky, forgot to request 'NO CHEESE'  on my baked bean grill, always a precarious risk on race day.

From there it was off to work for a couple of massages, then some strength testing at Liddy's clinic with his mate Luke. They are testing 7 exercises which give an indicator of injury risk, <14 puts you in the high risk category, I was 14/21 so scraped through. My straight leg raise was pathetic due to rectus femoris but my push up test was perfect, obviously too much T-Shirt training lately. I was given a stretch to specifically target RF, haven't stretched for at least 6 years, worried I might snap in half but I'll give it a go anyway.

Took Akira for another bike ride in the rain to the shops for some groceries in the afternoon. Don't know why but he actually likes riding his bike and also loves swimming, hopefully he'll like proper sports when he gets older.

Then off to the race, it was raining so did strides under cover in an effort to stay dry and warm. I lined up full of energy and possibly for the first time I can ever remember in an 800m I wasn't protecting a niggle of some description. What a great feeling to line up with winning the only consideration.

Went through 400m-58.0 in good position, quite aggressive in the 3rd 200m going through 600m-87.0 2nd. At some stage on the final turn someone or something must have jumped on my back, was still tucked in behind the leader at 700m but got the wobbles down the home straight, dropped 4 positions and almost 3sec, winner was 1:57.23.

Happy with the race despite the rubbish result, was stuck in a boot 6 weeks ago and just haven't done enough specific work yet. Speed is terrible at the moment so I'll race a 400m next Saturday, will be humiliating but should set me up nicely for another 800m 12 days later. Biggest negative was losing $50 to Tom but I have a chance to square it up as he has agreed to double or nothing on a sub 1:59 on the 22nd.