The intention was to make this a very easy walk. We decided to park the car in town and walk out to the track at Newtown Park where we had agreed to judge the walk race in the junior champs. We had gone a km or so when I realised that I had forgotten to wear my Garmin but I decided that was probably a good thing. I was pretty stiff after the race the previous day and was not aiming to do anything other than a gentle stretch out. We had lunch at the zoo cafe next to the park then went over to judge. There were around 12 entrants in each race, boys and girls and this was my first experience of judging. It was harder than I expected, particularly on such a short distance, 1 km. Most of them had a fair idea of what they were doing but I did feel sorry for the young girl who tried to do the whole race without bending her knee at all.
We walked back into town after the race to make up the 8 km distance.
Saturday 17 March - 1 hour Race and 10 km Track Walk
The one hour race was one on our club summer race schedule, the winner being the walker with the highest age standard award. I expected that would be Daphne who might get a gold in the W70 group. The gold standard for my age group is 9.8 km which in normal circumstances should be achievable but I didn't see that as a realistic target on this day. A 20 km race 6 days ago, a good workout yesterday, tennis in the morning of the event and nationals in 6 days time were the reason I decided to be conservative.
Once the race started I realised the heat and the wind were going to take a toll and I began to wonder if I would even make the silver standard of 9.2 km. I tucked in at around fifth position for the first couple of laps then decided to pass Kevin and Fraser who were ahead of me and seemed to be slowing. Sue was the next walker ahead of me. I tried to lessen the distance between us but she did seem to increase it for a while until I finally passed her about 2.5 laps from the end. I picked up two red cards by the 5 km mark and warnings from two other judges but fortunately no more cards came in. I was pleased to pass the 9.2 km mark with almost 2 min to go and was close to 9.5 km when the hour was up. I hoped there was no penalty for my bent knee when I put my marker down before continuing the lap and a bit to finish the 10 km. My final time was 1:03:18. I initially thought it was a PB for 10 km on the track until I remembered doing 1:02:30 in our first Harry Kerr relay in Auckland a few years ago. It was good enough for a Wellington Masters record on account of the fact that there is not one in my age group at the moment. I also found it was only around a minute off the national record for my age group so I should have a go at that later in the year.
Friday 16 March - 2 X 2 km + 3 X 1 km
I had planned to do this workout on Thursday but it was a busy day at work and I had visitors arriving from Motueka so I gave it a miss, feeling a bit guilty. It didn't seem such a good idea to do a hard workout the day before a race so I was in two minds about a workout today. The weather was good and my colleagues who are used to seeing me go out most days began to ask why I hadn't gone out today. I went out after 3:00 pm and was surprised to manage under 12 min for each of the 2 km sets. Unfortunately I was not able to manage the same pace for the last 3 km but the overall pace of 6:06 min/km was not bad. Average HR 157 bpm.
The splits were: 11:56, 11:58, 6:08, 6:14, 6:31
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