After the amount of fun I ended up having at the Trunce it was a no-brainer to return and have another shot. I had set a goal of averaging 5:00\/km last time, which is a fair improvement over the 5:05\/km I first ran, a full 31 seconds faster. Though I had a feeling that this week wasn\u2019t going to be faster. A weekend of wedding festivities (and 3 weeks of not being that active) didn\u2019t bode well for speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, I had managed to wrangle more runners this week. Alongside my dad coming to watch and Mark completing his millionth Trunce, I persuaded both Fiona and my brother Connor to come along and give it a go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A brief warmup and the race was on. I managed to wrangle a slightly better starting position which made for a much quicker start. Now this probably sounds like a good thing, but the limits placed on me at the previous race meant I maintained a more suitable pace, easing into the race if you could call it that. This week I burned too much too quickly, and as always, it came back to bite me. One positive of this was a full 9 second improvement on the first descent. I pushed thoughts of completely decking it to the back of my mind and embraced the mud surfing, dodging trees and bounding over rock and root to almost fall flat on my face in the river. I knew about the hidden dip and its rough location within the first metre of the river, and perfectly stepped into it. I submerged to above my knee and just about caught the forwards tumble, turning it into a stagger and clamber up the opposite bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What followed was a lot of overtaking, just not the kind I wanted. My heart was thudding in my ears and breath was hard to come by. Not too much of a surprise as my training consistency of late has been that of curdled milk. This trend remained, overtake after overtake slicing away morale. The final climb didn\u2019t feel awful, but leaden legs on the descent did nothing to help me fall down the hill. A full minute or so per kilometre slower than the previous event. At least I could celebrate I was in front of someone I beat last week oh no he\u2019s overtaken me. I tried to hold on and delay the final sprint to try regain my place, but the gap slowly widened and the kick didn\u2019t come. He did shake my hand though. 55th<\/sup> in 33:09. Onto the last race, just need to think of the fancy dress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n