All Blacks team announcement for the last Welsh test

ALL BLACKS: Israel Dagg, Ben Smith, George Moala, Ryan Crotty, Julian Savea, Beauden Barrett, Aaron Smith, Kieran Read (captain), Sam Cane, Elliot Dixon, Sam Whitelock, Brodie Retallick, Charlie Faumuina, Dane Coles, Joe Moody. Reserves: Codie Taylor, Wyatt Crockett, Ofa Tu'ungafasi, Luke Romano, Liam Squire, Tawera Kerr-Barlow, Lima Sopoaga, Waisake Naholo.

A few thought:

I like the selection of Moala. He is having a tough year at the blues, not cementing his starting position, but I think he has a potential to become some player like Ma-a. I think Hansen and co are looking in the same way.

I hope Elliot Dixon has a good game. He deserve a crack, and hope he does not stumble like Broadhurst did last year (remember him?) Also, good luck for Barret for starting at 10. I think he earned it. I am a Cruden fan, so watching with interest.

Coaches are obviously looking at Ben as midfield cover. Does it mean They think he can cover 12-15? Talk about Jack of all trade. ( scary thing is you can not call him "master of none" either.

All Blacks team frothe \\

Savea got dropped

It was quite interesting seeing Julian Savea was left out of the starting birth for the 2nd test against Wales. I have not been impressed with Savea's effectiveness for about 2years now. Yes he does show some brilliant stuff from time to time, like the try against France in the world cup. But I started wondering if he is effective enough over 80minutes. I think wingers need to be making running meters through out the game and also have to have finishing ability. In my eye, Savea is not making enough meterrs compared to somebody like Nehe or even James Lowe from the Chiefs. So I was wondering about the selection panel's view on this. With the way they replaced him in the last game and not picking him this week suggest that coaches are not happy with Savea at all at the moment. They never treated senior player this way before as far as I can remember, so Savea might be in big trouble. My view aside, I like Savea as a player, so I hope He fights back.
The way they picked back three for this game suggest they like having at least one power winger. so Naholo seems to be now direct competition with Savea. I am glad Dagg is getting a look in again. He deserve it. I do not think The coaches are looking at him as wings, so his only position in this team will be starting full back. Ben Smith has to start(deservedly) and Nehe would be incumbent right wing in the coaches eye. I hope Dagg has a big game to put pressure on other players.

Runner's Knee

You do not want to run a full marathon with a dodgy knee. Period. Other wise you might end up like me. nearly 3 weeks after a marathon and can't even manage a 1Km jog yet. I am talking about kind of a dodgy knee you can not even walk normally 3days before marathon. If you are like me, you might be wondering not running for couple of days will be enough for the knee to settle. In the morning of the race day, you go out for a warm up, feel knee is nearly pain free but still not 100% but decide to go for it in the wishful thinking that somehow your knee would hold it together for 42 odd K. My recommendation is: don't. Especially if you are middle aged runner like me.It is just not worth it. If you ever run a marathon, you know what kind of thrashing your legs get towards the end of it. No matter how much training you've done, you will not have much left in the last 5k if you are going for personal best. Hell, you probably have not much of a leg left even if you were taking it easy. Marathon is just that kind of distance. Your knee might starting to hurt even though you may not have had any problems before the marathon. Mine did, for my first marathon. Think about what kind of damage it can do on the already dodgy knee! Just not worth it. Best case scenario, you won't be able to run until pain goes away. It could be 2-6 weeks depending on how bad it is. Worst case, you may never be able to run again. In my case, I will be able to run again some time(soon, hopefully). But I need to remember how stupid a decision  I made, so that I will not make the same mistake again. ( I know, it is probably a wishful thinking......)

First All Blacks announcement for 2016!

Well, All blacks season is starting again. As with the case with this very astute selection panel, I thouhgt the team selection was largely spot on. Personary, If they were going to pick Liam squire, I hoped they have a look at Jordan Taufua. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fun of Squire and keeping eye on his dvelopment in Chiefs and then Highlanders. Yes there was injury problems, but it is fair to say he failed to hold on to his position in both occasion. I really liked Taufua when I saw him play for under 20, and managed to come through leap and bound for Crusaders this year even though I thought he might be too small for 6 at this level. I  even think he is the best performing loosies in NZ this year. Just my 2 cents. Go the All Blacks.

Long and winding road to recovery

Done it again!  I pretty much wasted first quarter of the year for over training, so I had been very careful to stay away from that territory leading up to this marathon. I thought I was doing very well as I built up the distance and pace very carefully and stayed injury free. But, off course there is a BUT, it all changed on the last week of build up,just before going into taper. Up to that week, every thing was on track, and first time in the long while there was no niggle on my legs. So I decided to push for 100km total for the week as planed. Previous two weeks were 80k and 89K, so it was not a stretch to up the distance to 100K. Beside, I had about 3weeks of over 100k for last years Rotorua Marathon.
Problem this time was I also wanted to run in the marathon pace as much as possible to convince myself I could run at this pace for the full distance. I don't remember how the week ended up this way, but I did 31k and 25k marathon pace run almost back to back, just one easy day in between. After this, I started noticing a bit of pain on my knees at the begining of runs. At first these pain went away after warm up, so I didn't think too much of them, but decided to reduce the distance quicker than my planned taper just in case. Despite this, my knees got progressively worse and ended up not able to run at all in the last week before marathon. I also picked up a cold from my kids about a week before marathon and was having nasty coughing fit right up to the night before the race! Looking back, it is actually obvious what was the logical way to go. DNS. But runners who go for full marathon tend not be logical; we are forever hopeful kind of people. So I was hoping magically all the problem goes away by the morning and go under the target time!  I heard someone say" marathon is 20 mile of hope and 6 mile of truth. Well my hope did not last 20 miles in this race. It got shattered at around 15miles when my right leg started cramping up and lest of the race was just plain agony.
Well, it has been nearly 2weeks since the marathon, and I am still paying the price of the mistake. Even though my right knee does not hurt to bike or swim, it is still to unstable to run on,so I had not run for 10days now. nearly eternity in runners mind. To be honest, I am not even sure if my knee is getting better at all, still always hopeful every time I wake up in the morning to find somehow my knee is magically pain free. Well what did I say, We runners are forever hopeful kind of people.......

Hawkes Bay Marathon 2016

Ended up to be a very hard race. To be fair, Having coughing fit at 3oklock in the morning right up to racing day and not being able to even walk properly due to knee pain up to 3days before the race are clear enough indication how this race was going to go. But as a runner you tend to try to hang on to a little glimmer of hope in case all the problem magically disappear and everything come together on the race day. This was no the case for this race, unfortunately.
The day turned out to be a beautiful day. Looked a bit windy at first, but was not overly hot, at least in the morning. The organiser closed off the main street for the start and had a nice buzz of excitement in the air. Arrived at the start area with plenty of time to spare, so had a good relaxing warm up . Knee was not painful to run on, but definitely was  not 100%. At this stage, thought about 50-50 I would end up pulling out early in the race.
The gun went and everybody started to move forward. Actually, the start went quite smooth for a marathon of this size and I was into a good rhythm within 100m and first K's rap was 4.49. Surprisingly, knee was not giving me any grief at this stage and so I started to shift my focus for getting to the finish.Noticing heart rate was a bit too high for this part of race, eased up the pace a bit to bring the heart rate down and save legs for later part of race. Walked into the first aid at 5k as planned, but with the real race excitement, could not wait until the heart rate  to come down before getting back to run again. next 5k went smoothly, pace steady just over 5min/k pace and heart rate just over 170. Decided to take a little longer walk break at 10 K to bring the heart rate down.
After this the course changed from road to bike track.

With this surface change came the first sign of trouble; knee started to feel dodgy. It was not painful, but just enough discomfort to let me know it was not quite right. But everything else was absolutely fine , so just ignored the knee and pressed on. 15 K and 21K aid station came, and knowing next aid station was a bit farther at 28k, made sure heart rate was down to 150s before started the run again. At around 24K I started to feel the legs are getting a bit heavier. And then BANG! came the cramp on the back of right knee. When I think about it, I actually never had a cramp before while running. so did no know what to do with it. I stopped , stretched out the cramp. and started running again.Cramps just  kept coming back, so I had to reassess the situation quickly. At this stage I was pretty sure this marathon is over, but I was told at the start line to let somebody at the aid know if we were pulling out, so I decided to make my way to the next aid station slowly. On the way to the aid, I realised I could run if I ease up the pace to about 6min/k. So I just phoned up my wife to let her know what happened and my intention of trying to finish the race by going much slower and walk if necessary. I also told her to expect me at the finish around 4hour 30, instead of 3:30 I was hoping for. That done I switched my focus to getting to the finish line in one piece. Things got ugly very quickly and toward the end I was reduced to only 30seconds of continuous running before getting cramps somewhere in the body. (At this stage, even upper body was cramping up and I had to take the heart rate monitor off). Interestingly, almost all the runner around me was in pretty much the same state and runners were doing stretch all over the place. So my cramps may not have been due to my condition and might have been caused by the course. I don't know.There were a few runners even in the worse state and throwing up at the side of the road pretty bad. Looked like pretty tough day at the office.
Race itself was excellent. It was beautiful out there and locals were out in numbers and support from the crowed and aid station volunteer were just awesome! I enjoyed the experience even though my race turned out to be quite a tough lesson.
Finishing time 4hr 38 min

Tapering blues

Less than a week to go for the Hawkes bay marathon. I thought I trained really well for this period and managed to go through it without injury, but turned out that was not the case. Just as I started to taper the distance but up the pace a bit, started to feel a bit of niggles here and there. As a result, started to fail to cover the planned distance and forced to cut down on the distance and frequency of the run drastically. So the taper ended up to be like 100-68-25 so far instead of 100-80-60 i was intending too. To make the matter worse, started to have a pain on my right knee which never gave me a problem before and I can't get any run in for 3 days now. I am keeping things ticking over by putting in short bike ride and walks in here and there, but the word DNS started crossing my mind. Oh well it is what it is, so I just have to wait and see how it goes this week.

2 weeks to go before the Hawkes bay marathon. Started tapering after reasonably trouble free training cycle. pretty chaffed since January and February was a disaster with calf injury and nasty flu. Has been tracking nicely, but target of under 3.5 seem to be too ambitious at this stage. See how these last 2weeks go and decide to go for it or not.