Manawatu Gorge!

When I was asked yesterday if I would like to run an out and back through the Manawatu Gorge on Sunday morning I thought yay!  This would be a perfect substitute for running the streets of Feilding by myself for 20km.  Instead I would have company, trails and still clock up close to the 20.  I quickly took up the offer, packed up a gear bag and set the alarm for an early for me Sunday morning.   Zoom ahead to Sunday morning and I arrived ready to go at 7am.  Kel and I set off seeing where our feet would take us headlamps on to light the way.   The beginning of the track is always trying with lots of stairs and uphills so I am use to walking the major part of this.  Problem is, parts I have run before just didn't gel with me today and I ended up walking a lot more of it that I was planning.  We got to see the sun starting to peek through the trees and knew that morning was coming.

 At 4km I was still smiling and the dew was setting on my beanie.  I thought - well the tough bit is done, lets have some fun now.

Kel and I kept on plodding on.  The legs ached like mad, they felt solid like lead and it was a struggle.  I had really thought based on past experiences with the gorge that we would get all the way to the other end in 1hr30 but it seemed neither of us could find our groove.  We ended up running to the end of the track that lead back down to the road.  There was no chance of getting all the way to the Ballance end!  That was a full 1hr30 and now it was time to turn around and do it all again backwards.  We made it back and spent a total of almost three hours on our feet, covering 15km.  At the time I was running through all the things in my head as to why I might not have been running as well today.  Was it the lack of water yesterday, the early start, no coffee before leaving home, the cold??  Or was it just that I have let my fitness levels drop so far.  I had really thought that I would be covering a lot closer to 20km today but I honestly don't think I would have managed any further than I did.  Not really a good feeling when in 6 weeks I have a 25km event to run!  At least I will have a running partner for that as well as Kel and I decided we would join each other and run it together as support.

I should be proud of today and what I ran.  And I did run ...

But sadly I feel disappointment.  Time to do a little more work I guess and try and build myself back up again.  We are hoping to run it again next month so we will see how that goes.