Jumpin' Januaries, Batman!

[Mid Life Crisis Marathon Man]

Mercifully cool (17C) for this morning's long slowie. OK maybe not so long by the standards of those rip-roaring RCers in full-on pre-marathon and Almeria training mode, but a good 'un for me.

I'd planned 15km slow easy, but was still hoping that I would be up somewhere around six minute pace, and I have to say it all went pretty well. I was on the streets by about 6:30 am and it was nice and quiet and blissfully cool, which was just as well as I wasn't carrying any water (having lost my water belt).

It was a pretty straight forward street circuit loop around my beat, and I finished a reasonably comfortable 15.5km in 1h31:49, at an average pace of 5:55/km, which is about 15 seconds per km slower than I need to be travelling at to break 2 hours for the half marathon, but for an undulating easy training run I'm very happy with it.

A bacon sandwich and a mug of tea later I'm feeling very pleased. A good run. That run gave me 37km for the week and I'm already well over the 100km mark for the month, with a week to go. A great start to the year.

Only slight hiccup physically is that I've developed a ladyrunner-like bunion sort of growth thing on my right heel. It doesn't hurt at all - I didn't even know it was there until last night when I noticed what I thought was a whacking great blister but which turned out to be a lumpy kind of growth that has sprung up out of nowhere. Oh well, I'll see what develops. It's not a problem for now, but if it continues to grow it could get interesting.

Stay tuned for more footy news.