Soft Dogs and Englishmen.

With all my regular training partners absent, think Mikey (hols), Enda (Lions), Laura & J.C (Sat runners), Kanser (recovering from operation) , J-Fen (injured) and B' Grade (lining up for the Monorail) i was forced to put an S.O.S call out to the chairman late last night and get him to come over the bridge to join me for the Sunday long run.
Never one to let me down Tommy H and his trusty sidekick Dicky Green braved the big Sydney wet as we were the only ones in the park at 7.30 this morning. A loop of my 6k Woolarha Hill rep first up before leaving and heading down Ocean Street and onto the City to Surf course was the outward journey that included 'Heartbreak Hill'. Felt pretty good despite the deluge and made it up to Dover Heights (city to surf 10k mark) turning at 16k on the watch.
The heavens opened up even more coming back down the S's and even the local Dogs out walking were all rugged up and had there coats on that had Tommy H remarking that all the Dogs in the Eastern Suburbs must be soft :) Always good coming back down the hills and felt fine coming back along by Rose Bay although started to feel the pinch a little as i entered Double Bay(22ks) and the hill coming up to to Edgecliff was torture. The traffic lights were a Godsend and never been so pleased to see 'A little Red Man' stopping me from crossing(in fact i reckon i witnessed him 3 times before i decided to cross the main road) Another long stint back up Ocean Street before re entering the park and getting back to the cafe with 26.2ks all done in two hours bang on averaging 4.34s for the days work.
Tommy H who had gone ahead of me for the final 5ks carried on to do his customary 30ks for the morning, and was finishing right on cue for the Sun to come out and blue sky to appear.
Delighted to get that distance done and hopefully no problems with the Achilles, and just need to build on that for the next month or so.
Many thanks to the two boys for joining us this morning and keeping us company as without them i reckon i would have just plodded the park and called it quits once the heavy rain came along.

Disappointing result overnight with the Lions boys going down to the Aussies by a point,  Well played to the Skippy's and it now sets it all up for the final 3rd Test in Sydney next Saturday night.  Pretty ordinary game i thought (despite the result) with the game laden with errors. Can't really understand why so  many errors were made as it was a perfect night with not a drop of rain on the ground, no wind and a near perfect playing surface? - yet still the dropped balls and turnovers were very high.
Five changes were made for the 2nd test and after watching that i reckon at least another 3 need to be made as well, I'm a big fan of Davies in the centre but i reckon he got found out a little, Young's is not even good enough to get into my English side and well... the less said about Vunipola's performance the better.
Still we keep the faith and it's all to play for next week - early tip , take the lions by 6 :)

Lets hope this weather clears for a decent weeks training ahead
Cheers