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John, Cade, Stuart, Lincoln & Hannah all raced in the Nail Can Hill run last weekend.

This is the before photo as they got ready to head off to the start at 9am.

The race is 11.3 kms up and over Nail Can Hill and finishes over at Bonnie Doon Oval in West Albury.

Funny thing is that the photo represents the order in which they finished the race!

John, 47:54 mins
Cade, 48:55 mins
Stuart & Lincoln 65:09 mins
Hannah 77:31 mins

Cade has been waiting to turn 30 for a few years now, and it finally arrived over the weekend. He celebrated over pretty much the whole weekend, with a dinner out on saturday night, a 30km run on sunday morning to celebrate the 30ishness and then cake and presents on sunday afternoon.

We placed a marathon type of ribbon across the finish line of the 30km run.

Cade finishing the 30km run at 8:30am

Birthday cake time!

Present time!

For the record, I ran 30km in 2hrs and 35mins
-Cade.

UPDATE: Placed 15th in a time of 37:21mins.

Hopefully I will get a chance sometime this week to go for a jog along the course to remind myself of all the ups and downs.

For the record, I placed 14th last year with a time of 36:55mins. But I honestly don’t expect to perform anything like that this year.

But I still get a kick out of scaring the kangaroos away when I arrive for work.

As previously mentioned, I entered the 10km version of the Wagga Wagga Trail Marathon on the weekend.

Much to my surprise the field was very small (probably only 30 runners) and not very competitive.

Subsequently I finished first, by at least 1 minute I reckon. Not sure of the actual time yet, but apparently I finished the run somewhere in the 46 minute range. Given the cold conditions (I almost lost feeling in my hands for a little while), and the 10 styles we had to climb over, I thought that was a reasonable time, although a good 7 minutes slower than my quickest time for a 10km. However now it appears that the 10km distance was actually more like 11km. Not surprisingly, this is a very, very pleasant surprise. I don’t feel quite so awkward about my ‘victory’ now.

That works out at basically 4:30min per km over a flat and easy course. For a training run, I am happy with that. It indicates to me that I have returned to a reasonable base fitness. From here, over the next few months, I need to start doing a few things:

• A tough weekly interval/fartlek session
• A weekly/fortnightly long run building from 10km up to about 25km
• Compete in a few running events such as the 10km fun run as part of the Wagga Wagga Trail Marathon and the Lake to Lagoon
• Regularly (but not every week) attend Wagga Road Runners
• Continue to do plenty of cross training (bike riding) and at least 60mins every day of stretches/core strength work

…is now done and dusted and I am officially in the last 12 months of the last year of my youth.

Here are some highlights of how I spent my birthday weekend (Saturday’s are easily the best day to have a birthday as it’s so easy to justify spreading the celebrations over the entire weekend).

Friday:

• Late night screening of The Dark Knight at Forum 6 Cinemas

Saturday:

• (Very) early morning 60min run. SHORT TERM RUNNING GOAL ACHIEVED!
• Full hot breakfast @ Astor Inn (as part of an event conducted by St Aidan’s Presbyterian Church, Wagga Wagga)
• (Surprise) afternoon tea (birthday cake) with the WOAs and BOWs
• Dinner with my lovely wife at a good restaurant where we both ate too much and had leftovers for lunch the next day

Sunday:

• 10km run along Nail Can Hill, Albury.