Reality check run, is probably the best description of this mornings run. Someone said to me last year before the Triple Peaks not to worry about Mt Erin its a doddle, YEAH RIGHT! Its long and unrelenting and combined with about 10 gates to negotiate its a reasonably tough run on the best of days. Met up with Chris and Mike just before 6am and drove out to find the gate in the dark and without my glasses which made the task even trickier. We parked a couple of kms from the gate and started off in earnest which takes a while these days once I get all my gadgets going! We chugged nicely to the top in reasonable time about an hour all up, couple of pictures and took in the view from the top (beautiful) and back to the car. I felt pretty good and when we got to the car I could have happily jumped in and gone home but we turned around and headed back to the top again. It was warming up by this time and the second assent seemed tougher than the first but we kept our discipline and chugged to the top and I think someone planted a couple more gates along the way just to make it that bit tougher. I found the second run down tough as we upped our speed and I could feel it taking it out of my legs and knees but we got back to the car in 3hours 13minutes and 28.7km and for a week total of 99.12km which might be a record for us!

Considering I was feeling it after the run and pretty stiff when I got home I came right after a hot shower and felt great that afternoon and on Sunday. I had a moment on Saturday when I thought we haven’t done enough but that always happens with me as we get close to a race, I don’t think we could have done much more and with another decent week in store for us coming up I think (hope) we should  be OK. I have been stretching a lot more in the evenings which is helping and I have also started the hot/cold wash on my legs after the harder runs and again I think that’s helping as well. We will see and I will catch you again after our run on Monday.

Kia Kaha Aaron

Chris…

Whoever said Mount Erin was the easiest out of the three is having a laugh and cant have ran it twice in one day after a hard week on the tracks, crikey that was tough we manage 28.9k in 3hours 13mins. We met up just before six and headed off down Middle road in car looking for the entrance, easy in daylight but took a bit of doing in the darkness. A couple of false starts and a U turn later and we were there, we decided to park up a couple of K down the road to make a decent run of it. We set off at an easy pace nice and steady chatting away and before I new it we were at the entrance and heading up. There were lots of gates to negotiate but apart from that pretty straight forward and again before I new it we were at the top. We have been running with hydration packs for a couple of weeks now which are filled with cold water and not hydration fluid like we did last year this combined with Leppin on the hour seems to work for us. A quick photo session and off we went straight back to the car then without stopping turned around and headed back to the top, this is were it got difficult and for some reason it felt twice as long as the first time, might have been because we had run out of things to talk about and all I could think about was my heavy legs and lack of breath but we made it in the end which meant that we could turn around and run all the way back down again, great! Finished it though and recovered real quick I didn’t much feel like I could or wanted to do another 18k or so like I would have too on the day but I have to keep reminding myself that on the day I would not have done a hard weeks training prior so I should be feeling a lot better. A day off tomorrow so I will blog again on Monday.

Later – Chris