Two more sleeps

After 4 months, 1200km and 150 hours of training spending many weekend mornings on the road instead of the bed or in a cafe, I and hopefully the rest of the team are as ready as we can be for Friday morning. Palm Beach, 6am start for 100 kilometres of sand, trail, road and grass to Coogee Beach along the beautiful coastline of Sydney.

I spent the last 48 hours eating pasta dish after pasta dish, and with tomorrow still looming as another pasta day, I will probably end up with a few extra kilos at the start ready to burn them along the way to Coogee. The weather is a bit unstable at best and it looks like a wet run awaits us. Not too much of a worry as I prefer this to a too hot and humid day, which are typical for this time of the year here in Sydney.

I packed a few extra pairs of socks, shoes and shirts to swap along the way. Nothing feels better than a new set of clothes after 50-odd kilomtres of running in the rain.

I need to get my sleep now, a bit of a bugger as it is our wedding anniversary, which only comes around every four years! I promised Uli to take her for a good night out next week ;-)

Happy feet and don't forget to follow us on twitter @run4vision.

Markus

Trivia night helps restore sight to another 296 needlessly blind people

Last night over 200 people packed the big function room of the Randwick Labour Club and enjoyed a great trivia night organised by Team Run 4 Vision. After a short presentation by myself about the event Sydney Coastrek and the reason of running 100 km next Friday, Colin, our trivia master, opened the 'show' and started testing those brains.


We had some heavy competition going on and the 50-odd prizes donated generously by our sponsors all found a deserving winner at the end.

My blind friend Ben attended with friends from his team. Team Achilles will be participating in the 50-km day trek from Palm Beach to Balmoral Beach. An all visually impaired team together with four designated guides on a world-first attempt to finish a 50km team event!

Ben kindly helped us to draw the winners of the raffle competition. 

Thanks to a great effort of all participants we raised almost $7500 on the night, an incredible amount that will allow The Fred Hollows Foundation to restore sight for another 296 needlessly blind people in the developing world.

Thank you to everyone! There are five days to go before our team will be at the start to the 100-km Sydney Coastrek. It is still time to support our team to reach our goal of raising $10,000 and save 400 needlessly blind people's sight.

Thank you!

Palm Beach to Manly

It was another beautiful Sunday morning for our last training run on the trek. Getting up at 4.45am is not really what I am good at and after a short scooter ride with Denis to the train station I was ready to fall asleep again....
After 30 min on the train and bus, we caught up with Jo, Sam and Adam, who was kind enough to drive us 4 from Pymble all the way to Palm Beach for our start.

It is February but the morning was cool like in autumn,  something which however changed very quickly once we started off and had to climb the first steep hill up from Palm Beach to get to Whale Beach.

As soon as we reached some covered area the humidity also became apparent and the going was relatively slow at beginning

After about 6 km into to run the tail started following the cliffs and the views we enjoyed were spectacular!

Glad we had time and cameras with us to take some great shots along the way. Don't think we will spend too much time during our race taking photos.

Some steep ups followed by some steeper downs....

At Avalon we hit our first beach and running in the sand changed our pace quite a lot....have not been running with backpack on the sand since Morocco - some great flashback of hard going across sand dunes and desert.

I am not the best with heights but Denis was even more chicken when Jo took this photo of us on the edge of the cliff looking back to Palm Beach and the Entrance of Pittwater.

 

Checking the map and planning the next crossing of a lagoon 

At each beach where we had to cross water I decided to take off my shoes and socks and run the length of the beach barefoot - a quicker way to cover those nasty beaches....

 

The heat, getting up soo early in the morning and carrying the backpack eventually got to me and I slowed down more then I liked at the end.

With all the photo stops, getting shoes off and on at each beach and some quick breaks to put our heads under the shower to cool down along the way, we managed to reach Manly in just under 5 hours.

I was so happy to get into that refreshing water to cool down and loved the fish and chips lunch even more afterwards.

It was a long day from getting out of bed, running 5 hours and getting back to Maroubra just before the thunder storm but a worthwhile exercise as we now know all the little turns and twists of this trail and should no longer get lost on race day.....

18 days to go

Trivia Night next get together on Friday, 24 February in Randwick

Happy Feet

Missing Denis

Denis had all the intention to catch up with us on Sunday but somehow he missed us along the track...here is the photo how it should have looked in Coogee after our 4 hours training run.

This Sunday we will all be running from Palm Beach down to Manly so we will have covered the whole trek in training and should know all the little tricky bits along the way.

Nothing new in regards of weather forecast - still overcast and rain...but that will make for a cooler running day.

Don't forget to book your seat or table for our all important trivia evening on 24th February in Randwick

http://www.run4vision.com/coastrek_trivia_night.php

Listen to your body

After the last crappy weekend, when I had a hard time to get my feet off the ground and hated every km of the two runs, I decided to take a few days off to recover. I guess those 3 weeks skiing and eating Swiss chocolate caught up with me. So, after 3 days of doing nothing, a great massage and only a 1-hour jog on Thursday, I was ready to join the team for the weekend training – covering two sections of the Coastrek.

On Saturday morning I ran from Maroubra to the Opera House were I joined up with Jo, our new team member and Sam. Denis, the slacko, stayed in bed pretending to suffer from jet lag (he flew back from Perth the night before).

From left: the invisible Denis, Sam, me and Jo at Coogee Beach

We enjoyed a great run along the coast to Watsons Bay and then down to Coogee. The first 3 hours were blissfully cool, and only during the last 10km the sun came out – and with it the humidity. Denis tried to catch up with us, but missed us running into our direction. He called from Vaucluse when we just arrived in Bronte! After a great 5 hours run it was bliss to jump into the pool to cool down before enjoying a great breakfast with the whole team at Coogee Beach (Denis made it back in time for brekkie).

On Sunday we drove to the Opera House to park the scooters and toke the ferry to Manly. Denis and I started towards the Spit Bridge and Sam and a couple of her friends ran towards us from North Sydney. Halfway we met and continued all together back to the Harbour Bridge. It started to get very hot and I felt yesterday's long run in my legs. Sam's friends were setting a fast pace and kept chatting casually all the way back to North Sydney. I am glad that they did not sign up for the Coastrek, as they would have left us in their wake big time.

We found out later from Sam that one of them runs marathons in just over 3 hours, and the other is a champion in orienteering... no wonder I struggled to keep up with them. Now looking forward to another relaxing week before attempting the last (first) section of the trek  that we'll be running from Palm Beach to Manly next Sunday.