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Sweet. The Mount Sinai intervals sesh went better than I expected this morning. Woke up for a 5.30am run again, and did the same programme as last week -- a slow 2.6km jog to Mount Sinai, four laps of the Mount Sinai 1.2km killa-loop, on 4min rest in between each lap, and a slow jog back home.

Thought I should take the first one relatively easier to get my body into the groove of things, so clocked 5.15 on the first one. My initial thought was, uh-oh, that's even slower than my slowest one last week. Am I in for a bad workout? Heck anyway I've taken on a "don't think, just run" philosophy, so didn't think much about it and ran the next lap with what felt like just a little more effort. When I stopped my watch and saw 4.58 I had to do a double-take. But then I thought, uh-oh, have I gone out too fast? 4.58 was my fastest one last week. Anyway, don't think, just run, again. I was worried I'd slow down on my third lap but turns out I did 4.53. The final one always hurts -- I came back in 4.53 again. Jogged back home, had two glasses of 100plus/OJ, showered and went back into bed. Bliss.

The only problem with running faster is that you worry how long you can keep it up for! Next week I'll have to go faster!... Uh-oh. Don't think, just run.

Swimming was good too, yesterday morning, despite having worked till 2am the night before. I did a 1,000m warmup, followed by 4x400m hard with 100m easy swim in between each set. Finished off with some drills for a 3.9k grand total. 400s went 6.47, 6.47, 6.47, 6.43. Nothing spectacular but I felt comfy all the way so twas all good.

This Sunday I will be running the Nike Human Race, and I think it's gonna be a whole lotta fun! D's running too so that makes it twice as fun. Can't wait. It'll also be a good hit out before next weekend's Aviva Ironman 70.3 Singapore. Interesting to see how that goes, seeing how I haven't been logging much miles at all on the bike or run since the Sundown Ultra.

Last week's training went well, swam Monday, interval run and swam Tuesday, 6k easy run and core workout Wednesday, 14k run Thursday, swam Friday, bike-run brick on Saturday and 13k tempo run Sunday. Lets hope I can keep it up this week and the following weeks too!

Olympics fever is over and it feels kinda weird not watching sport all-day on the telly anymore. :(

It's been a long time baby. I guess I've just been too busy to open my mac at home and start typing into this blog. My office laptop, for some network reason, cannot access my online html editor. Even now I'm typing this on D's lappy, waiting for the Olympic men's triathlon race to begin.

I went for a run this morning, my first 5.30am run in a long long while. Probably since the week of the Ultra! Oh wait, no I did do the Gold Coast Marathon (but more on that later). I was very determined to get out of bed this morning after seeing Emma Snowsill's heroics in Beijing. What a bloody awesome runner that pint-sized Snowsill is! I was cheering for my friend Debbie, who was representing NZ and came in 10th in the end. She had a great run too. Fernandes, who I had interviewed at last year's Olympic test event at the same place, was also absolutely amazing. I am so happy that she got the silver... just shows nice girls don't finish last! I watched with mouth wide open, in awe of the way they tore up the course. Trust me, it's not an easy course and the hill looks flatter than it really is. I did some morning jogs on the course when I was there last year and it's no joke. The bike course is killer too. These girls were just out of this world.

So, with images of Snowsill, Fernandes, Tanner and gang in my mind I set out for my workout this morning. I decided to do the Mount Sinai 1.2km loop (basically half of it is a killer uphill) that my coach, Mr Leong, had made us do while I was in RJC. For the life of me I was trying to remember what kind of times I was doing when I was still a teen, but I can't remember now. Anyhow I targetted to do four loops and managed to complete that in the end. I took a slow 2.6km warm-up jog from D's place to Mount Sinai, rested for a few minutes and did some stretching, and I was off. The first round I cut a corner by running on the pavement instead of the road and came back in 5min, the second round 5.07, third round 5.06, and finally 5.13, which by then my legs were jello and my breathing brought to a desperate wheeze. But it was good. As I jogged back to D's, my legs were so shot but it was such an awesome feeling. Was home before 7am, everything was nice and gloomy... perfect. Did some core work on the gym ball then showered and snuggled back under the covers.

This is the third week that my right knee has not given me any trouble at all. If you read my earlier entries, I wrote that I'd destroyed my right knee somehow during the 84km ultramarathon, but didn't feel it at all during the race and only realised it had died a day later. But being stubborn old me I still kept up with running, about once or twice a week, albeit only 5km each time, but little did I know how serious the injury was. 

I ran the Gold Coast Marathon on July 6, my first overseas marathon -- and first DNF in a marathon. The weather was perfect, about 18 degrees, humidity about 70 per cent, course was flat and fast and scenic, and the crowd and supporters was just awesome. So I was cruising along at a 5min/k pace up till the 21k mark, and wasn't too shabby until 30km. Then suddenly, the knee went from a mumble to a shout to a scream to a yelp, and I was brought to a halt at the 32km mark. I tried jogging again after walking for a while but I just couldn't do it. The pain was excruciating. This wasn't an important race for me, so I decided not to push it and risk a longer recovery period. So I crossed the road (it was an out-and-back course), and I asked the road marshall for help. He told me I had to wait for the last runner to board the vehicle that was sweeping the course, so in the meantime he let me sit in his truck, gave me his jacket and a hot cuppa. I sat there, watching the runners and a couple of familiar faces go by, finishing up their last 5km of the race (it was the 37km mark). After about 20 minutes of waiting I thought I was going to freeze to death, and I also thought of D, who was running the 10km and project to finish by 11am, searching for me at the finish line. I decided to do the 5km hobble back to the finish.

It was the most painful experience of my life. And it took a good hour to complete the race. But I was happy that I managed to get back before 11am, find D and experience the awesome final 1km stretch where the crowd was thick, the music thicker and the cheers, boisterous and uplifting. As I returned my timing chip I told the volunteer, a middle-aged lady, that I didn't want the medal and t-shirt as I didn't finish the race. She stuffed both rewards back into my hands and said, "Inspiration for next year, inspiration for next year." Gold Coast, you bet I'll be back! (Especially with all the good food, chai lattes and shopping we had there!!)

Anyway that's that. I took two weeks off of absolutely zero running after the race. I cycled, swam and used the elliptical trainer in me office gym. A few weeks ago, on a Sunday afternoon, I was using the elliptical trainer when my knee suddenly went pop and what felt like a bolt of electricity shot up my leg all through my body. I immediately stopped and feared the worst -- have I totally destroyed it and now need surgery to repair it? I've never had any injuries throughout my running career before, so this was scary. 

But God works in mysterious ways. After that popping I took about two more weeks off running. One day I tried running on the tready and I felt absolutely no pain. I think that pop was some ligament or tendon that had been out of position getting back into the right spot. So, I've been running since, building up from 5km runs to 13km runs and to hard intervals.

Aside from running, swimming is going great! I feel like I'm getting the hang of swimming on my side, rolling from side to side thing.. if you know what I'm talking about. I've been clocking times that I struggled to reach in the early years of my triathlon career. And that was when I had proper, regular training. I've learnt when you're working and strapped for time, it's better to work on quality rather than quantity. A slight improvement in technique goes a long, long way in a long race.

Anyway, the Olympics track and field heats have just started so I'll sign off here and check back later. Hopefully it won't take a full two months just to do so again!