Thrills, spills & hills - Vaucluse Variation - week 11 of 15

Today's run was either uphill or down - virtually no flat except 500m across Bondi Beach. Way too many twists, turns and stairs to get any sort of rhythm normally - except today - felt really good.
Nick, Springer and I headed out with the 6.10 group to get an extra 10 mins in and doubled back to the start ready for the 6.20 group. A bigger than normal group today including a lot of quality runners - the Truscotts x3, D.B, Ray W, Fats, Leftie, Springer and others. We set off with a steady pace thru Rose Bay and up into Edgecliff, Paddington, Bellevue hill and down into Bronte via Waverley. Thru Paddington, Jenny T had a stack and took a lot of bark off both knees but soldiered on good humouredly. We had a brief waterstop at Bellevue hill Park and had caught the 6.10 group before 15k and after an even briefer waterstop at Bronte the pace picked up considerably.
Round the waterfront from Bronte to Bondi it's basically watch every step as there are a lot of people, stairs and rocky paths to negotiate. I was ambling along well and when we got to Bondi realised that we had dropped the main pack - decisions - wait or stick with D.B, Fats, C.T and P.T.
Feeling good I thought, well, they'll drop me going uphill out of Bondi anyway and the others will come back to me. Managed to hang on thru this though and nearly all the way thru to Watson's Bay. P.T dropped off then myself - but I caught up again going downhill into Watson's Bay. Here we made an extra detour thru the Bushy paths around the Gap and South head rejoining with the 6.20 group for the return 2-3k back to Vaucluse.

Nick and I got in another few minutes with a loop around the Park after a brief drink stop although by then, I was spent mentally and physically.

I rate that run tougher than Bobbin Head - Bobbin head had more and bigger hills but it was all on low traffic roads with a low concentration level. This run was at you all the time to watch your step and pay attention.

Covered around 34k (including the Sth Head extra bit) in 2.34 at not much more than 4.30 pace all up.

Another solid weekend of running. Thanks to Nick for the lift there and back and for 2 great runs this weekend. One more hard week left and then the taper begins.

123k for the week.