Fashion Island 10k - 2010

After racing back to back for nearly two months my coach finally gave me a month off. In that time I was to jog, bike, swim or do nothing. Anything but race-walk. He wanted me to have a complete break and wind down. Oh how I needed that!!!

In this month lay off I have started a new job (new hours too) and have taken up my Legal Executive Course, so I study for two hours every night as well. So needles to say my training has consisted off 3 x 5km jogs and 1 x 10km jog. So when I saw the Waimea 10km series I was all kinds of excited as I love 10km races. The only problem being I have not walked for nearly 6 weeks and still have 1 more week until I am meant to start up again.

So I have decided to do the series just as training walks and not actually race them.

So the race.............Well I have to take my hat off to the orginisers of that course, it would have to be one of the worst courses to walk that I have ever walked....it was more up hill than down. But the weather stayed dry but cool. Its just coming into our winter so temps were a little chilly for us...long sleeves (but not long pants....heaven forbid you wear long pants while race walking here!!)

We started off heading up hill and we weaved our way around some back streets of Nelson.....at a guess 800m until we reached the top and turned to head back down, then we turned and went back up again....we had one nice long flat section only to be faced with a steeper hill to climb up. I have not learnt the knack of race walking up a hill nor coming down. I always feel I am going to slip over when I pick up pace coming down. The lead female walker (Wendy) was already 500m out front..as expected...she takes full advantage of the down hills having a perfect technique and can really pick up some speed. I got to the 5km turn in 32.00 which I felt was ok considering the hills and that I was just cruising. My lungs were holding out and I was not breathing too hard. The weird pain in my side had come back and was nagging me a little.

I was having a good wee battle with Bevan (a rec walker) he would catch me on the hills and then I would pull away on the flats. Facing the hills on the way back was not much fun and I was out of steam and struggling. So just the desire to finish and not let Bevan beat me was my motivation. I know that there was a good battle going on behind me with Stephen (our coach), Ross and Sharon. It is always fun to cheer all the walkers on at the finish. Usually everyone is smiling and laughing but today everyone looked shattered and all were well pleased to have finished.

The results for the first three walkers were:

Wendy Healey W 59.12
Peter Hague W 62.27
Nyle Sunderland W 63.38

and this should be a link to my garmin details for splits and a map of the course...

Waimea 10km series - Fashion Is by kyisis at Garmin Connect - Details

But the coolest thing of the whole day, was not the race but a present that was given to one of the walkers. Pete - who wants to run a marathon next year and is going to run not walk. We call him SOF (sly ol fox, silly ol fool...) and we tease him lots as he always walks past you saying "are we there yet.....or...its only me..." Well Yvonne and John came up with the most awesome idea and made up a special shirt for him to wear as Marathon coach and team leader. Its red and on the front it says "Caution - slow moving vehicle" and on the back it has an old man in running gear with a zimmer frame with "ARE WE THERE YET!" across the top. I cant wait for the training to begin and see him in it.