Attempt at Customs 5k - not so good. I didn't feel overly flash on Thursday night, and thought my lack of good form on Friday was probably as much to do with an emotional flatness, as anything else. So I fronted up to Customs on another cool, blah kind of day, hoping that Aki was able to get there OK from Uni. There was no need to worry. Although I knew I wasn't in sparkling form, I planned to do a longer loop after Customs had finished, so had packed other shoes, socks and dry clothes in the car in preparation.

Aki and allrounder were each starting earlier than me, and I decided to stick to my handicap start time even though I knew that I was not running anywhere near that form. Chatting to Ian, a thoroughly nice guy I hadn't seen for too long, I only heard a muffled "13 minutes gone" and headed off a little belatedly. The first hundred metres (downhill) was OK, but it quickly deteriorated and I was feeling very ordinary. Sighting Mike on his way back as he went early to "carry the watch" I made a half joking comment about turning around and coming back with him. I didn't realise at the time what good advice that would have been!

Aki, having left 30 seconds earlier disappeared into the distance. Despite trying, I 'died', finding barely enough to put one foot in front of the other. I detoured before the globe for my first toilet stop. By the one kilometre mark I felt dead. I plodded along, thinking that even a slow 5k plod would do me some good. More and more of the back-markers passed me, and I dashed into the Acton Ferry Terminal loo's before even completing 2kms. Rejoining the path, even plodding was hard, and I was finding it painful. I stopped to walk, and then attempted to jog once more. It was no good. I cut my losses and turned around and walked, slowly with increasing gut pain, back to the start, shortcutting across Commonwealth Avenue.

It wasn't the DNF that I minded, but how this would affect my weekend plans for the Shoalhaven King of the Mountain. It had not been a good week physically, and having not been able to complete a 5km fun run, how was I going to be in a 32km mountain run? I'm quite pleased with how my new found sensible attitude has paid off, but really did not know how to read this.

With another 6-16km out of the question, Aki and I retired to the relative warmth of Regatta Point to catch up. A short black seemed to work wonders, I felt more human than I had for days, and felt much more capable of tackling another run. More discussion of life, the University, and R4YL, another short black and life was looking pretty damn good. Still demoralised about the uncertainty that the condition is causing me, and the difficulty in managing it, but hey, I'm out there much of the time.

Plan to drive down to Nowra and stay with Bob's "little nephew" Warren on Saturday. I don't need to make a hasty decision, but should do so before too long for Warren's sake.