Australian Masters Athletics Championships : 8km XC Preview

I only ran one lap of the course yesterday on my warm down. The main purpose was to see if it is safe for my ankle (I think it is). I can't think of another course like this and if it were my main event I would have trained specifically for it. Basically 400m on a grass flat, then all down on a smooth gravel trail a long long way, a short flat to connect with a sometimes rougher uphill gravel trail all up in two brutal parts connected by a longer flat section. No good for spikes, the shoe I wore yesterday on my left foot will be fine so long as I put another shoe on my right. If I start the left ankle will be taped.

I am guessing it will be fast from the gun on the grass flat and onto the long downhill section. The uphill sections will be selective on both laps as they are quite steep and sometimes rough, the grass flat and down on the second lap will allow lactate reduction as it will be fully maxed out after one lap, the final ascents deciding the final order of things. There will be a need to go deep into lactate on the both hill sections. One thing I am confident of is I will have sore calves for a few days should I make the start line.

Footnote on the original peroneal injury in late 2010: I am sure I was using the same spikes when the injury initially occurred. I thought it may have been stepping back into a pot hole but I only discovered it while doing power hill repeats a day or two later. It happened in  late August 2010, I had just run City2Surf and was beginning track training after my European break. In hindsight it may have been caused or aggravated by the spikes themselves doing a long interval session on track. I moved on to the more supportive racing flat based Adidas Cadence shortly after the injury and left the spikes in the cupboard until very recently. I brought both sets of spikes down this weekend. History repeats.