Week 5 and not an inkling of the svelte, toned marathoner with a spring in his step.  In fact I'm feeling heavy legged almost all of the time right now.  Lurching out of bed in the morning sees the limbs of lead hit the deck so hard the floorboards are in danger of snapping, climbing the stairs is a thigh burner and I'd sooner be wheeled around the office on my chair like a Corporate Davros than go through the agony of actually getting up to walk to the photocopier. In fact, rather bizarrely, the  only time my legs don't feel tired and heavy is when I'm running.  Sure, the first mile is as exhausting as ever but once I'm warmed up I actually feel quite relaxed and ready to pile on the miles.  Hmmm, maybe the marathoner is hiding in there somewhere after all..

Anyway, following the huge amount of fun I had at HellRunner in November I decided to do it all again and this weekend ran the Brutal 10k at Longmoor.  The husband half of the dynamic Whitewick duo couldn't make it so I ran the course with Paula.  I have to say that I was somewhat relieved that she decided not to wear her Christmas Tree fancy dress costume.  Not only were precisely none of the rest of the field in fancy dress but we'd have been more likely to expire somewhere half way round from waterlogged roots than to finish.  Cross Country in this format is bloody hard work: plenty of short sharp hills, sand underfoot for much of the time, freezing lakes and a good dose of wet English weather.  It sounds like a recipe for a horrible day but you'll hear squeals of delight all the way round (not from me obviously - far too butch) as people splash into muddy puddles, squelch through ditches or slide down mud chutes on their backsides.  The GPS watches are left at home; they wouldn't survive and time or PB's don't really matter, and instead you're given the chance to pander to your inner child and wallow in the mud, mud glorious mud.  In short, if you've not entered a cross country race since you left school then you should because you are missing out on some serious fun.

So, new year looms and it's back to the roads for me as I up the mileage again.  Four runs planned for this week and I'm hoping to get a first use of my very favourite Christmas present - my head torch.  So far it's come in handy for searching for things in the garage, changing light bulbs in the bathroom and jet washing my trainers in the dark.  Hopefully it will actually prove just as handy for running!  I'll let you know.  

Happy New Year to all.

On The Wagon

Well they do call it the Long Slow Run I suppose.  Yesterday, for the second weekend in a row, I laboured through the long run at a snails pace with a sore head and alcohol rushing from every pore.  During the first week of my training I did wonder how I was going to adjust to running slower so that I could train up to the marathon distance.  Four weeks later I can tell you that all you need to do is attend the office Christmas party and you'll be running so slow moss may well begin to grow on you.  With a young family and a demanding job I don't get out too often so I can't regret making the most of the opportunity, but I was definitely regretting the Sambucca shots and the last few JD & Cokes somewhere around the middle of Portsdown Hill.  Today, the effects of a long last week at work and a couple of beers at Poker Night made me too lily-livered to even venture outside and I shuffled along on the treadmill in the warm.

It's obvious, but the last two weeks have definitely proved to me that booze, late nights and running just do not mix.  My days of having a skin full on a Saturday night ahead of 90 minutes of (admittedly crap) football are a long way behind me.  As I said, I don't get out too much anyway and I generally don't drink at home so I'm hoping that I won't have to try too hard to keep to the promise I've made to myself not to train with a sore head again. Dryathlon here we come....

Anyway, 4 weeks in and the quality of some of my runs may have been poor but at least I've managed to stick to the plan so far.  I'm slowly getting used to running consecutive days and with tired legs.  In fact this week I did answer for myself a question that has always bugged me - how can you ever describe a run as "recovery"? When you're running twice a week every run needs to count and you need to push yourself, but when you're running more often a slow steady 45 minutes after a heavy day really does help to expel some of that stiffness in the thighs and generally speed up the recovery process.

Next week brings the the first race I'm going to enter as part of my training when I tackle the mud and puddles of the Brutal 10 at Longmoor on the 29th.  Before that of course we have Christmas.  Whatever your plans, have a great time and I'll see you on the sprout boosted recovery run on the other side.

Beware the old ladies at the bus stop.  I first learned this as an unsuspecting 15 year and that long held knowledge may just have saved my life last week.  

Summer 1984. The Los Angeles Olympics were in full swing, Prince was on the RSPCA's most wanted list and Mr Angry from Purley was racking up a fair old phone bill.  Myself and a school mate spent a week lodging with my grandma in Walton on Thames, fishing the river every day and staying up late into the night to watch Zola Budd ensure the Americans didn't have it all their own way.  We all know that summers past are always sunny but I have the photos to prove that this one was.  Each day we would hitch our fishing kit (rods, reels, nets, seats, umbrellas, bait, tackle, lager and cigarettes... lots of it, you get the drift) onto our backs and trudge the mile or so from grandma's to the river.  One day, maybe halfway through the week, we happened to be passing a bus stop at the same time as the local bus approached.  It was at this point that we learned NEVER to get between a silver haired old lady and an approaching bus.  In this instance there were probably twenty of them that surged towards the opening door of the bus at the exact moment we passed.  Twenty eight and a half years later I can still remember the painful embarrassment we felt as we picked ourselves from the floor in time to see the bus speeding off into the distance with Hell's Granny's giving us the V's from the back seat.

I suspect that most of those dear old ladies have departed this earth, but their tradition lives on and I was nearly a victim a second time last week on a run through North End.   Having been threatened and accosted by various tracksuited drunks as well as ridden off of the pavement by teenage yobesses on their Choppers (There are so many of them about that I swear a container destined for Raleigh HQ must have gone AWOL at Pompey dockyard at some point) I'm generally on my guard if my route takes me down London Road.  Combine this with the knowledge of '84 and bloodshed was narrowly avoided outside Cash Converters as the bus for Southsea pulled in.  Admittedly, dropping the right shoulder and diverting my course into a wall was painful but at least I stayed on my feet this time around.

Anyway, two weeks into my training plan and all is well.  Nothing volume of distance wise that I haven't done before at this point but I'm back into the routine and, so far, have managed to stick to it.  Last Monday did have a couple of notable firsts in that my run home from work was the first time I've ever run on back to back days and the first night run I've done.  The small amount of foresight I had in bringing a rather pathetic LED handheld torch with me was probably offset by the fact that most of the running kit I own is black.  It could just have been this combination that meant the speeding cyclist on a particularly dark section of the route didn't see me but as I dived for the bushes I could have sworn I saw the words "Bus Stop" on a sign beside the road.