Rest time is over

It's apparently called "Fat April", the month that follows the end of the triathlon season when the racing and training is done and we get a chance to relax and regroup.

The training program shows several entries of "Morning off" and "45 minute walk" or "light jog", our long rides are punctuated with a coffee stop and non triathlon activities replace the usual Sunday long run.

My most recent race season had consisted of a total of seven triathlons (two Olympic, four long course and an Ironman), a half, a full marathon and one charity ultra marathon, all squeezed into the space of seven months so the chance to tackle the 1000 steps, try a my hand at a bit of Yoga and sleep in was a welcome change.

Now, officially April is done and the final "tour de Latte" was this morning and the long steady build for another season begins on Monday but I have one finally fun and different activity planned before all that.

The Wings for Life run is unique for a couple of reasons, firstly, it is being held in 33 cites around the world with each event scheduled with a local start time scheduled so all competitors hit the track simultaneously. Several years ago I entered the Nike "Human Race" which was similar in that events were held world wide over a 10km course and you could see how you ranked globally, yet, each race only happened on the same date, not time. This leads to the second difference, the simultaneous starting pistol means this will be a night time run for us racing in Australia. For us, the gun goes at 9pm and our race kit included a head torch and a high-visibility vest as compulsory items to wear on course. The final thing cool about this race is that we are not racing towards the finish line, instead, we are actually running away from it and there are two ways to complete it. You either run the full possible distance of 100km (not likely!), or, get passed en route by the rolling finish vehicle.
Thirty minutes after the official race start the "catcher car" heads out along the course behind us, when it rolls passed, your race is over. According to the provided calculator, a pace of 5:18 per km will result in a run of 23km. The calculation handles the steady and scheduled pace increments of the catcher car but does not take into account my lack of any significant running for several weeks so, I may not get the projected 2 hour race that the on-line numbers predict.
Whatever happens, tonight's race will include several firsts for me and it should be a pretty cool event to be a part of and a fitting close to recovery month.

Tomorrow, we begin again.