The Nemesis

My Nemesis at the moment is work, I shouldn’t say that as it’s how I provide for my family and a job I enjoy but It’s hard being a Retail General Manager at Christmas time, especially in a great summer climate like Australia. On one hand it’s a very busy and profitable time of year which is few and far between in retail these days. On the other hand the extra busyness has greatly Impacted my running, blogging and to a lesser degree family and social time. It’s hard to find the right balance at the moment.

Tomorrow is my only day off work this week and I am getting up early and tackling my favourite Nemesis. On Strava The Nemesis is a 1.95km segment where I live that takes in a trail descent, a stair and hill climb, a hill then stair descent followed by a steep hill climb. It’s 120m of ascent and descent in this segment. Tomorrow I’m there with a couple of friends first thing in the morning for nine repeats with a two minute recovery between. Approx 18km with almost 1000m elevation gain. This is one of my favourite runs. Normally I only do five or seven repeats though. This segment gives the legs very little time to rest or even actively recover, they are working all of the uphills and downhills which makes it mentally fatiguing aswell. It also makes it brilliant strength training and a session every runner should have as one of their usual workouts.

The photo above is at the base of the climb, at this point you’ve descended to here then completed a stair and hill climb and then descended that stair and hill climb back to this point. With a steep trail climb to go.

I am looking forward to this run immensely, because i’ve not done too much running this week and need to get my training on track  and also to take my mind off work for a day. The rest of my day is also busy watching my daughters first swimming carnival and then some Christmas shopping.

But first The Nemesis x 9 is my goal.