going for the gold

sorry for the long time in posting. if you are a distance runner and a postman, then december is one of the busiest months of the year, for the parcels, christmas cards and the fact that it is generally considered to be a good month to considerably step up the quantity of training that you do. add on to that the fact that i am also taking driving lessons again, this means that i have very little time to my self apart from the 2 hours that i set aside in the afternoon to sleep. this though didn't stop me from making the trip down to millfield school for the avon and somerset cross country championships, where my efforts over the 10.1k course (some people thought it was longer than that, but that doesn't matter in cross country as it is all about positions and not times) were rewarded by firstly beating jerry hogan for the first time in a non track race, by over a minute, nearly beating jonathan goodland for the first time being thwarted by a attack of stomach cramps on the final lap, 7 seconds being the closest i have ever got to him, and a gold medal for being the sixth and final scoring runner for bristol who were the champion club for 2007, although wells city harriers international runner ben tickner was the somerset champion and avon champion was craig peters, although why they run seperate competitions for avon and somerset is beyond me as it unnecessarily dilutes the quality of the competition.

in the race, which also incorporated the final race of the south west league and the wessex league i finished 39th out of about 120 ish and 14th in avon, although thuis by no means makes me the 14th cross country runner in avon as there were some highly notable absentees like rob whalley ben noad frank tickner, who last year completed a clean sweep of all the cross country championships (european trials, world trials, 'the national' and the inter-counties championships) and together they formed the inter-counties winning side so they would be fairly formidable opposition. the course it self was fairly muddy but flat, not that that forms any worries for me as i am starting to get to grips with cross coutry a lot more now than what i thought i ever would. maybe one day i can repeat the succes at the avon and wiltshire track and field champs one day or at a higher level. i am still progressing as an athlete and whilst science dictates that i wont make it to the top, you should never under estimate what hard work and determination can do.

the next race for me on the country at least is the south west intercounties champs which also doubles up as the south west club champs. with the strength in depth that avon and somerset have it is highly unlikely that i will be picked for the county team as the previously mentioned athletes will almost certainly be picked it would be a huge confidence boost for me if i could beat some of the runners from the other counties as this would confirm my belief that one day i will eventually be capable of competing at this level, whether it is one the track (unlikely) the mud or the road (there are loads of inter counties road champs that don't get much publicity. i'm going to try and further my cause at weston tonight on the 5 mile prom run...its as good a starting point as any

hit on the hitman!

well theres good news and bad news...the bad news is that work is shite at the moment. its busy they're conveniently "forgetting" to pay people for the over time that they do. well only the strikers. isn't that a coincidence? the scabs get all the favours as usual. we did them loads of favours before the strikes and the later starts and they've just thrown it back in our faces and more. i along with many postmen and women around the country am exceptionally pissed off with the breathtaking incompetence of royal mails management. for example, after saying that they couldn't afford to give us a wage rise which we have had to fight so hard for at portishead office they have now employed 5 agency workers yes 5 to cover the work of one person. now where is the sense in that especially when you are paying agency rate and they can barely speak english? on top of that we are the ones that have to take the brunt of the criticism for the decisions that the management have made over the past year, and it has dented the pride that the guys and girls at portishead offfice take in the service (yes get that word mr crozier, service, not profits) that we deliver. don't get me wrong is still enjoy the job but the circumstances are becoming far more awkward for us to do our job properly.

there have been two very good training sessions since we last spoke. one on clifton prom and the other at clifton college one the road both. clifton prom is a hill session, with varying lengths of repetitions one long one just over a mile, one just over a k, one just under a k and the other about 700 yds. we covered one long one, 3 of the 2nd longest and 3 of the shortest and whilst my times were slightly down on my fastest from last year that was to be expected with the appalling weather. i managed a 5:45 for the first one the next set were all smack on 3:50 and around about 2:15 for the shorter ones

the weather was even worse for the thursday so only a hardy half dozen or so turned out for this one. apart from craig peters and his gb u20 international brother, i was leading the group for all of the reps closely followed by claire willer, who i can always tell because she has a very distinct breathing pattern when she is strugling for breath. we did three times two laps and 3x1 laps and i recorded times of 4:42, 4:37 and 4:32 which equalled my best, which i only realised when i checked it out in my training log this morning. pleasing given that the conditions were better that day and it was done in a much shorter session. on the shorter reps i did a bit of a pedestrian 2:15 on the first one and gradually got it down to 2:08, which in good conditions would probably be worth 2:04 given that it felt like we were running in to a head wind the whole way and that by the time we finishedthe peters brothers were 60 or 70 yards clear of me and i was 20 or 30 clear of the rest.

finally i'm predicting that ricky hatton will win tonight. he looks fired up, while mayweather looks washed up and he wont know whats hit him when when he walks out in front of the "barmy army". when he gets in to the ring the hit man wont give him a moments rest, and floyd mayweather does not like being roughed up. i see a knock out at about the 11th or 12th round or maybe a points decision in what could be one of the greatest contests of all time. this is a fight thats as big as the leonard-hagler-hearns-duran battles of the 80's and i haven't been this excited about a sporting contest in years. what makes my mind up is that all boxers (not media) are saying ricky will win. even george foreman called mayweather a coward! bring it on!

change of plan-portsmouth victory 5 cancelled

thei title says it all. so instead i will be doing a longish tempo run tonight followed by a long run and a gym session tomorrow and probably sitting around sulking in the afternoon because i should have been running. on the other hand i might have a bad nights sleep and think thank god for that. the reason for the cancellation was because of the xtreme weather forecast, 50 mph winds storms which would particularly in a place like portsmouth harbour mean that you are very exposed and any mention of fast times which is the reason that we were all going down there in the first place, is just completely unrealistic. there is the opportunity to do a cross country race in wales but long cross country in this weather would kill your legs stone dead for a good couple of weeks afterwards.

i am looking for a race next saturday though as its my day off and it also happens to be the day we get our xmas bonus and our backdated strike pay. nice so i might take advantage and pay a trip for a race up to some where like london or anywhere come to think of it if there is something worth doing. the librarys now about to close for lunch and i'm soaked from work today so i think i might go home now. bye bye.

pete

time to make amends

for a day i would rather for get at bath. to put it bluntly my legs just couldn't do any thing i wanted them to do on sunday and i ended up coming home in a time which frankly i would rather forget about of 18:30. come to think of it my legs are still rather tired now, but i think thats as much induced by the fact that i have been getting back in to my normal routineof 5 oclock in the morning starts. it quiet at work at the minute but that wont last long as the christmas pressure period officially starts on the 10th of december and with all the cuts they've made recently it promises to be one of the toughest of recent times.

tonight its mile reps at aztec west. i'm hoping to beat my pb around there at some point this year of 5:21 but of the two sessions we've done there i've been in less than perfect shape both times due to races done in the previous couple of days before the session. this is a session that i have a particular hatred of as the route that we use is long straight and predominantly featureless, so it leave you with the impression that you are running hard but going nowhere very fast.

news from the horses mouth

take it from me i will be racing at bath university, a place that feels like it has been a recurring theme in my life for the past week or so, tomorrow. its a 5k road race, the first in a series of two 5k's and a 10k all around the bath university campus. i will hope to better the 17:54 i ran there in february this year, but i'm not holding out too many hopes for a pb because of the twisty turny nature of the course. it starts quite quick with a couple of laps of the track before you venture out on to the campus. the finish comes upon you quite quickly and you almost don't notice it until you run past and they call out your number and your time! thats what a lot of people did last time round any way. the other two races are after christmas, but theres plenty for me to be going on with and thinking about between now and then including the victory 5 next sunday, the weston prom runs, the bridge inn, but i was advised by mike not to do that one as it would mean doing 2 races in the space of three days, which would affect preparations for portsmouth as it would mean skipping a training session. theres also a weston prom run and the locally famous clevedon boxing day 4 miler (or piss up if you are a clevedon athlete) where everyone who's every one in local athletics turns up to run the hangovers and xmas pudding out of their system.

and of course if you're a postman like i am yes there will be thousands of xmas cards and presents. this year though i have promised my self, that i will be doing absolutely nothing that i don't have to do. i have spent the past two and a half years working over my time for free, doing extra tasks for free to help the office out and it has all just been thrown back in my face and more by a manager who has no idea how to manage and who thinks that all the rounds can be done in about a hour and a half because a few idiots come in early, so they can finish early, break health and safety laws, by running, use their cars on delivery to save themselves a bit of time and generally lick the managers arses to get a few favours to themselves. its funny how these people all non strikers are getting all the favours and over time now isn't it? non discrimination? bollocks.

ready to race

there is apparently a 5k at bath university on sunday and if i can find confirmation of this then i will be doing it, and i will sacrifice doing the bridge inn on tuesday night in return for doing a training session at aztec west. one of the reasons i hate that session is that nearly everybody drops out of the session before the end and i quite often end up having to do the final mile on my jack jones which means that i end up doing it slower and i (obviously) end up getting a worse time which reflects more badly on me. last night there was a very small select group of us at the track at filton college for a session taken ny the university of bristol coach keith who some what annoyingly after telling us it would be a 7:30 on the dot start turned up at 8:00 citing the fact that he got held up at work. there were in fact only 5 people turned up last night due to the fact that the european cross country trials are being held in liverpool on saturday so many people are resting for those in the somewhat unlikely in many cases hope that they will be selected to go to toro on the 9th of december along withthose who have been pre selected ie mo farah and bristols own kate reed.

the session last night was 4x800 and 4x400 with non of the long recoveries that you get used to having on the track in the summer and to be quite honest about that i was glad about it because it was freezing cold and i didn't want to be stood about waiting. after a slow start on the first 800 (i was delibrately cautious because my calf muscle felt tight) 2:42 i was soon doing much faster 2:34 and 35's. the 400's were all done in 72 or 73, so i was pleased to see that i hadn't lost too much of the speed that i gained in the summer, but i had no hope of doing the 67 or 68 second laps that i was doing then. 800 meter races will definintely be ditched from now on it'll be 15's and 3ks on the track from now on (according to the test i did on tuesday my 3k speed is 17.45 kph, which works out just over 10 minutes although i reckon i can beat that next summer, quite comfortably and you add 10% for each distance down and take off 10% for each distance up although this can be some what inaccurate as you get further and further away from the 3k speed. i've yet to sit down and work out what it translates to time wise for each individual distance but i will doo that eventually and then decide i can beat those time probably

the treadmill test...

i can see why it was likened to having a tooth amputated without anaesthetic. it wasn't just the equipment but all the breathing apparatus you had to wear. it was very uncomfortable, the main reason for that being that instead of wearing a face mask like they do at some places where they do these tests it was a snorkle device that was attatched to your head via a head brace and attatched to a machine via the usual tubes and electronic paraphernalia. then they put a clip on my nose which was in turn placed on top of a plaster to stop it from slipping off, which at first i was secretly hoping it would, but eventually i learnt to tolerate its presence. its purpose was to make sure that all the oxygen/carbon dioxide that i processed was captured by the machines/computer.

first things first we sorted out all the usual paper work and disclaimers etc and i was allowed a ten minute warm up at low speed on the machine during which a heart rate of about 88 bpm was recorded. before that commenced though a blood sample was taken to record my blood lactate, haematocrit levels and all sorts of other biological data that the non sporting people out there have never even heard of. a heart rate monitor was used, i don't particularly like them very much because they constrict your breathing, but i endured it once just for the purpose of gaining information about myself.

once the warm up was complete, i was allowed to stretch etc just to make sure that i didnt pull any muscles or any thing. that is some thing that you don't want to happen on a treadmill as it can be positively dangerous as it wont stop for you and you'll go flying off the back as happened to robbie bugden once (one of my club mates) when he twinged a muscle and cracked his head open on one of the bars when he fell off!

so dr jonathan robinson and one of his female assistants decided to set me off on the treadmill at 12 kph and it was decided (or rather dictated to me) that we would do 6 3 minute intervals at increasing speeds with a 30 second break on each of them to take a blood sample from my finger. it felt easy at first but it got progressively harder and on the old rate of percieved exertion scale i gradually moved up from about 8 or 9 to more like 17 or 18 (the maximum is 20) so after 6 stages that represented the end of the first section of the test. i then had a timed ten minute break in which to stretch keep loose and replce any lost fluids. now this was the really nice bit. at the end of the test i was back on the treadmill this time at 15 kph, slightly slower than the 17kph i finished the first section of the test on. sounds easy, but for every minute you were on the treadmill they increased the incline by 1%. it feels slightly easier a first but believe me it gets very hard very quickly. when i asked what the average was they said for an elite athlete it was between 6 and ten minutes. i manged to get past the start of the 8th stage by which time my legs were shot to pieces. i had the report today. there was a hell of a lot of data on it and it said that my vo2 max was 57.89 lactate levels at the end were7.46 mmol and my haematocrit (red blood cell)levels were 47%. the most important thing it said was that all the data suggested that i was a long distance runner. when i mentioned this to mike he said that he had always thought that but because of the greater nembers involved in road running he recommended i do track to make a greater impact on my opponents as relatively the number of people running on the track is at an all time low.

cometh the day...

well that day is tomorrow, the day that i finally i will do the dreaded v02 max and lactate threshold tests. jo pavey once likened it to having a tooth pulled out without anaesthetic. rob whalley, when i asked him what it was like cmpared to the most painful thing i know in athletics, running on the track doing short repetitions, in typical northern fashion, the answer was short and to the point. "no its much worse". the good thing though is that there are things that i can't go wrong tomorrow. i can't go off too fast. the speed of the treadmill is will dictate how fast i run which is in turn, dictated by a mr jonathan robinson, who is whe guy conducting the test.



the test will be structured as follows. starting at the lowest speed, which will be set according to how your heart rate responds to a short warm up, for 3 mins, with 30 sec recovery to take blood sample. then repeat at the next speed, then the next and so on and so forth until you are utterly exhausted and just can't take any more or until you collapse in a heap. i've been there a few times in training, once when i had to crawl from one side of the track to the other at the end of the session. i'm not going to make any predictions about what times it wil predict i am capable of or how much lactic acid i can tolerate, but i can tell from my race times that my current vo2 max is some where around about 60-65. thats mililitres of oxygen per minute per kilogram of body weight. the best the highest ever recorded by any athlete i think was either lance armstrong or miguel indurain, who had scores around about the low nineties, whereas dave bedford holds the record, (well these are stats from about 15 yrs ago) for distance runners at 88.0. i some how think though that both kenenisa bekele and haile gebreselassie will have higher scores than that though considering that their 10,000 meter times are over a minute quicker than bedfords. someone i know in brighton would probably have a score close to zero. i wont mention who it is because scott roberts knows damn well who he is

going to the more recent past i raced over 5 miles at weston on thursday night and came away with a new pb of 29:17, and came 10th, which is my highest ever position in that race one which i have raced several times over the past 18 months or so. sub 29 minutes has to be the aim and i reckon i have it within me as on thursday, for large parts of the race i didn't feel laboured. working hard yes, but not fatigued. i started off quite sensibly, placing my self behind a group of about 6 blokes. for the first mile or so they pulled away from me and i let them do this but not too far and not to the point thati couldn't catch them later. after the first turn i was surprised at how easily they came back to me and by halfway i had caught them and they were all to a man going out the back door to use cycling parlance. clevedon runner andy heyes tried to go with me for most of the 2nd lap but i was always confident that my far superior speed would take me away from him and in the end i pulled away from him, albeit temporarily as he produced quite an impressive kick in an attempt to catch me but i covered the last 200 yds or so in about 35 secs which would probably of held off every one in that field apart from phil parry who won and the cardiff runner michael johnson, no relation to the american track and field legend. me and phil were the only two bristol runners who bothered to turn out and his partner sian who won the womens race, well thats actually three in total.

since then its all been easy days in readiness for whats to come tomorrow, with no running at all today. it has to be like that because you are operating on your aerobic and anaerobic limit simultaneously, which is just about one of the hardest forms of exercise you can get apart frommay be doing a marathon or ultra marathon, although ask me again about that that tomorrow after the test!

bye bye!

pete

failure is the key word

i took out the frustrations of failing my driving test for the stupidest, harshest most minute of reasons on monday out on my running last night, that was after destroying my mobile phone when i got home, so those of you that have my number please promptly delete it the watch this space for a new one. not that i have much intention of getting one some time soon, but at some point i will have to. the reason why i failed was positioning-being to close to the white line (but never actually crossing it unless there was an obstruction). i have no recollection of doing it but there you go, theres no point in arguing because firstly they wont change their mind and secondly, you might get the same examiner for a subsequent test and henceforth the chances of you failing again instantly multiply.

enough of that. i'l just have to put in for my test again some time soon. in the mean timei have things to look forward to on the running scene, like my vo2 max test in 13 days time, and err not much else because soon after its going to be december and we'll be snowed under with xmas work and the ongoin backlog from the strike action. they're still having to rent out extra warehouses in some parts of the country.

last nights session was at coombe dingle with a session where the initila part wa divided in to 5 sections of 4 minutes, the first being a straight 4 minutes, the 2nd and 3rd being four miuntes with a 30 second increase in pace somewhere in the middle, the 4th two sets of two minutes with a short 30 second recovery, and finally 4 times one minute again with a short recovery. the final part of the session wastwo laps of the field for the middle distance people and three laps for the endurance people, me being officially somewhere in between, until i get some sort of scientifically based indicator ie when i do the vo2 max/lactate threshold test which will give me the best indication yet of what i am capable of.

i was holding my own against some of the faster runners last night quite well and i do some times think that if i trained properly for cross country, rather than running on the road all the time, then i might do quite well at it. but cross country is all about positions in races and times are not really given any respect like they are on the road or the track, which is where my heart lies, much as i enjoy the mud and the wind and rain.

with no club events coming up apart from a long course cross country race on sunday at bath, which i shan't be doing, it is time to flick through the running magazines and see what i can find on the roads as i feel in need of a racing fix, and apart from the usual weston prom 5 milers and the bridge inn 5k's theres not much going on, unless who happen to be able to drive, which i can't because of an incompetent examiner. no, better stop that before i go on one of my rants. unfortunately most races are on a sunday morning in rural communities where there isn't a train station within 15 or 20 miles in some cases, no over exaggeration. so i guess at the moment its just a case of keeping my eyes peeled for some thing just on the off chance, like for instance a cancellation at a driving test centre. or maybe even a race.

the road to athletic super stardom

after all those years of trying to get in to the news for all the positive things i have achieved in athletics, i finally get in the newspapers-the swindon start, front page-for a race that i utterly failed miserably in, the swindon half marathon. how did i come to be in posession of one of these newspapers-well a customer recognised me from when i had been running around portishead and passed it on to the office pervert nigel lines, who in turn gave it to me. really i was annoyed about this piece of publicity, because i didn't particularlywant to be reminded of failure, but sometimes that can be a good thing to keep you motivated and to keep your feet on the ground when you think you're invincible. you never are you just think you are when you're really fit, but you only ever stay that fit for a short period before fatigue sets in

i cant believe its november already!!!!!!

training is in full flow now, races are coming thick and fast, we have the national cross country relays on saturday at mansfield, there will be a few more 10k's and half marathons before christmas time, but its not certain that i will find any that i will be able to get to, but i would like to have a crack at my 10k pb before christmas time, but like i have said before the biggest question is passing my driving test on monday, which will make life a whole lot easier, and give me a lot more choice in terms of the venues i can race at etc.

coombe dingles session on tuesday was a toughie with a six minute rep, 3x3 minutes, followed by 2 minutes short recovery 1 minute three times, three times 1 minute and finally a four minute rep. my legs were still tired from sunday, until about three hours before the session, and i that made me regret the decision not to do the bridge inn race on he same evening, but sods law i suppose, if i had elected to do it i probably wouldn't have recovered in time. so it was probably the right decision to have a confidence boosting cross contry sess, where if i had run badly it would have been harder for me to tell because all of our efforts are measured against the clock rather than in distance.

on a different note we have finally had the proposals for the industrial dispute tabled for us and the cwu has recommended that we vote yes to accept the new proposals and end the dispute. all of this could have been avoided if the royal mail had listenend to what we had to say in the fisrt place rather than obstinately deciding they were going to make sweeping instantanous cuts under the banner of 'modernaisation', which we all know it wasn't really, accross the board, putting people in fear of losing their pensions and their jobs. i still think its very odd how adam crozier and alan leighton could justify saying that we were underworked and over paid, yet they are paid £2.7 million each per annum and only work about two days a week. its also odd how the pension deficit didn't affect their own company pensions. still even with an agreement, theres no way either of them will get a christmas card from me or 190,000 other union members. they might get a piece of dog shit through the post or some thing like that though....on a happier note though they'll be gone in a couple of years probably with a cool couple of million in bonuses and a pat on the back for 'a job well done' and some one else can come in and fuck it up even more

tired legs

theres a saying in sport that pain is temporary and glory is forever. most of the time i think that is the wrong way round though. the satisfaction i feel at a good race or achieving one of my targets is often short lived before i start thinking about the next of my targets, whilst (like today for example) if i have had a hard race my legs can feel utterly drained for days afterwards. on sunday i finished 69th, and my legs were hurting from sart to finish. the course was on a field and whilst it wasn't classic mud and trenches cross country course, you were always either going up or down a hill. one end of the field was at sea level whilst the other end was 131 feet above, which just about says everything. it was one short lap and 3 long laps. i was boxed in at the start but as the field started to thin out that was when i started to make my move, 100th at the end of the 1st lap gradually picking as many people as possible off before finishing 69th and collapsed at the end. gb international ben tickner won the mens race, whilst fresh from 10 pinst of cider the night before, complete with a hangover, claire willer won the womens race.

i went for a run when i got home in the evening just to try and get rid of some of the lactic acid and 30 mins was ok. i did another run this time for 55 mins last night plus a game of badminton and i really think its a long time since my legs have been so heavy. i am not expecting anything special from tonights session as i don't think i will have recovered properly.

i had my 1st deep sports massage on friday and i was surprised to be told that whilst i have exceptionally strong calf muscles, i had virtually no muscle on either my hamstring or my quads or my adductors. if i can run such good times on legs that are allegedly so weak, then it will make the results of my vo2 max test in 3 weeks time very interesting. i vehemently deny that they are that weak though and any way i know that i more than make up for it with huge amounts of grit and mental strength. thats one of my training partners words not mine!

its been a long time since we spoke

due to the fact that the 6 o'clock starts are now here which means that i am rarely able to get to portishead library before it closes, so as you can guess a lot has gone on in my athletic life since then. we have trained twice at coombe dingle since then once at bristol zoo and i have had a 5 mile road race at weson super mare where i ran 29:42. i have also been asked out by a woman, who changed her mind as soon as i said yes, giving me a lesson in why women can be the biggest head fucks in the universe.

last night at the zoo we did a session of long lap, medium lap short lap x2 and my times were 3:45, 2:55, 2:15, 3:50, 2:47, 2:17. i still fel a bit 'leggy' from tuesdays sess at coombe dingle so it was quite pleasing that i was able to equal the sorts of times that i would have ran last year only if i was feeling particularly good. it was annoying though that some upstart students decided to turn up and take my place as leader of the chasing group (self appointed by the way) behind the county and international standard runners/duathletes/triathletes.

for those of you who never thought that in their life time they would ever bear witness to a miracle, well now you have. my cross country career, which i had once given up the ghost on is now restarting on sunday with a run in the new south west league. the standard isn't expected to be as good as the gwent league but the distances covered wont be anything like as far (8.2k for the blokes) which is far more suuitable for me than the 10 or 12k races that they have at the gwent. they say that the course has some hills in it which will suit me even further. rather than trying to win the race outright i have a few people in my mind that i want to beat and i'll just settle for doing that afterall it would be madness to try anything special after so long away from the brown stuff!

disappointment at swindon

one of the first rules of running a pb in any race is that you must finish the race. that unfortunately rules me out completely, having dropped out of todays swindon half marathon. having started quite well, i managed to stay with the lead group for the first couple of miles before the problems set in. firstly my legs were tightening up and every time i slowed to accomodate for this problem they just seemed to tighten up some more. maybe it was an effect of over training, maybe it was some other problem. having got a lift back to the start i queued to get a massage done, i think i got closer to the route of the problem.

"no wonder you dropped out with legs like this" said the massager.

"why?" i asked

"theres massive knots all over the place, no wonder they felt so bad. its a cumulative effect of not warming up and down properly and not stretching properly over the years". so i think i'm getting close to the root of the problem. getting more massages done would help as well as that helps to iron out any potential problems. the one problem with that though is that it is almost impossible to massage yourself. meaning that the cost is rather extortonate."

the fact that things have gone wrong both times i have competed in half marathons tells me quite clearly that i am just not ready for them yet. while my 10k times are coming down every time i do one, that half marathon time of mine remains a real blot on my copy book. lesson learnt i feel.

on the positive note though there is a prom run on thursday night down at weston super mare a 5 mile road race on a course that i like and is always fast whenever i run it. a pb would go down well but i have a perfect record of having pb'd every time i've run the course at weston. finally i can't go without mentioning the rugby last night...after being writen off by every man and his dog at the start of the tournament, england are in the final of the rugby world cup and look as though they are coming in to a bit of form at the right time. even if we win on saturday, i still don't think that this england team is as good as the team that won 4 years ago, but it isn't performances that count, it's results and i would take a 3-0 if it was offered to me now, whether it is south africa or the argies and i don't care which as i think we have an equal chance against either team.

i'm supposed to be training tomorrow night with mikes group, but don't think i will be as i feel tired and jaded as a result of not having slept properly. and if i am to race on thursday i will need to rest. on the other hand it might be the perfect confidence booster for me and i suppose it would help me todecide whether or not the problems i had today are a long term thing or just a result of having got out of bed the wrong side, metaphorically speaking. we shall see what we shall see.....

easing down

for the first time in a long while, i gave a session a miss yesterday/last night, whilst at coombe dingle on tuesday, whilst i was running further ahead of people i would usually leave behind, i was still running rather quite easily. the session was 6 minutes, followed by 2x3 minutes, followed by 3 x 2mins short recovery 1 min 30, long recovery and just for good measure at the end a 8 minute effort was tagged on. mike said to me not to bother doing the thursday session if my legs weren't feeling fully recovered, and not to worry too much about it if i didn't as i wont lose any thing by not doing it and i wont gain any thing by doing it.decision made. the effort now is entirely on being fresh for the big day on sunday. i asked mike whether or not he thought i was fit enough to beat 80 mins and the answer was a straight no and he said that 85 minutes was a more realistic target. i do wonder sometimes how much of what he says is actually what he genuinely thinks and how much is him trying to get people fired up for the races with a bit of what can quite easily be perceived as criticism. its certainly stung me in to action a few trimes before. i have been warned about this though go off to quick and it will hurt like hell and could take a few weeks to recover properly. i'll bear that in mind but i still feel like going for 1:20, i've got my heart and mind set on it far too much now. does that sound like a recipe for disaster? i hope not, but 13.1 miles is a long long way and the early pace will feel easy. but i'm a gritty little fucker and the more i get in to this running lark the tougher i'm becoming and the better i am at holding on when things start to go tits up, but hopefully not on sunday!

a kaick in the teeth from mr brown

after we had been striking to save the postal service from annihalation by messrs crozier and leighton it looks after what gordon brown said last night we could lose this dispute. congrats gordon, in 3 secs you lost 190,000 votes.well done

we will never be broken mr crozier

not by royal mail at least, but the intensity of my training over the past week or so has more than made up for the pathetic lies, mistruths etc etc over the past couple of weeks. the walkout was close to 100% today and yesterday. one thing i have learnt during this whole sorry affair is this. in an industrial dispute, you certainly know who you're friends are and quite often the ones who cross the picket line, the scabs are often the worst hypocrites as they will moan more than any of the strikers will, yet they act like goody two shoes in front of the managers to try and court favours. i certainly wont be making any time for the few who did cross the picket line yesterday. they justify it by saying they can't afford to lose a days pay. what they have to get in to their heads though is that even if they are only trying to earn a days wage, in the eyes of the evil one and his cronies if they cross the picket line they are supporting the evil ones position. most of the scabs don't have enough moral integrity to understand that though and as i said to one of the scabs once in a heated discussion, don't ask me to explain what that is as i haven't got all day to sit here explaining it.

i have used the spare time for 2 things. doing some cash in hand work to keep the old income up and some more training. i used google maps to find out how far the tempo run i did on saturday evening was and it said 10.2 miles. and i managed it in 62:37, which i was well happy with. an hour steady run on the sunday followed by a gym sess and i could certainlyfeel the lactic acid in my legs and the same on monday. tuesday we were at coombe dingle doing some timed efforst on the grass and the session was as follows. 1x6 mins, 2x3 mins, 6x1 mins, 1x 6ins. i managed the 6mins ok, but from then on in it was a strugle with the effects of saturday night still in my legs. i even had to drop out of two of the reps as my legs just weren't responding to any thing i was trying to tell them. by the time i got to the final 6 minute rep it was just a case of getting round in one piece. the fact that i got out and did some thing was in itself a positive.

on to thursday night and we were doing an old favourite of mine, the sneyd park hills. these are roughly 1k per rep and it is a circuitwhere you start on a moderate slop, turn a corner go up a very steep slope, turn another corner and you are on the flat for the final sprint, before you jog back down for a recovery and you start all over again. i did 3:22, 3:24, 3:25 3:31, 3:31 and 3:31 there were again still effects fron saturday but nothing like so bad this time. as usual on the hills i was leaving the people i usually run with for dead and on the first rep i ws actually not that far behind the lead group. usually only 3 or 4 max in that group, but they were given a shorter recovery. i was looking for a race this weekend but the only thing i could find was the avon 10 mile championship which is too long for this close to the swindon half next sunday

grinding it out

a week has gone by since the last time i posted in here and a few things have changed in my running life since then. i am getting a good feeling about this winter, i can feel some pbs coming. in fact just as a guide, i have raced 3 times so far this winter and ran 3 pb's, even if two of them were for distances that i will only race once a year, that is the same every year and it demonstrates that my year on year progression has been quite positive when you consider for the first two races i knocked off 36 seconds and 27 seconds respectively for my best times for those respective courses. on tuesday night i ran a third pb of the winter, 17:33 for the bridge inn 5k road race at shortwood. overall i would still say the race was a disappointment as, whisper it quietly, i was beaten by claire willer, who also ran her fastest time for that course. my legs were tired from saturday still and i felt rough pretty much the whole way around. thats not making excuses though, because even though she had never even been in front of me at any point before in any training session or race, (she was 40 seconds behond me at clevedon), when roles were reversed and she was the one with the heavy races in her legs. she is a good young runner though and i always felt that at some point she would get me. the two positives i can take from this though are firstly being behind her gave me a nice view of her arse and having done that on tired legs i know i can run faster when i am fresh and on a faster course. just to put in perspective how well she ran, she was only two seconds behind martin flook the current senior mens midland area 800 meter champion. its still some thing that i have to put right next time.

thursday night was a 5 mile tempo run around coombe dingle, or they say its 5 miles i personally think its a bit short by about a hundred yards or so. i completed the course in 27:42 some way ahead of the elite women who aprt from one who was just behind me and some way (about two minutes i am told) behind the elite/international men who were only about a hundred yards in front of me at the end of the first lap as they decided they were going to run easy and chat to each other while they were running before they got a bit more serious on the second lap. it felt like they were toying with us and it was infuraiating! its the first time any body can remember running that course as a straight 2 lap tempo run. previously it has either been 2x1 lap with a long 6 or 7 minute recovery or just a 2.5 mile tempo run.

staying on the subject tempo runs will be the order of the day for tonight with a hard 11.5 mile effort around where i live as a final hard run before the swindon half marathon and i will be aiming for 6 minute mile pace or thereabouts. i am delibrately running tough courses because it will harden me up ready for what is apparrently quite a tough course and also because living on the top of a very steep hill i have no alternative. running may have to take a bit of a back seat soon though becausethe threat of redundancies at work are looming large and are now very real. if they succeed in cutting saturday deliveries, i will almost certainly be out of a job. they're saying that 40,000 jobs out of 170,000 will go through natural wastage. yeah right who do you think you're fooling crozier you evil cunt? still theres no point in me worrying about or trying to control things i can never have any control over and i bet adam crozier wont lose any sleep either with his £500,000 in bonuses. as joe frazier once said you just have to be a man and do what you have to do and not what you want to do.

hard day...tired but delighted

that was without a shadow of a doubt one of the hardest races i have run. sutton park is one of the great courses of world road running but it is also one of the most demanding both of your fitness and tactical nous. too hardup the 1st hill, even slightly and you will blow up spectacularly. the hills are quite some thing. luckily my level of fitness this winter meant i was able to keep a harsh pace going until about 2 or 300 yards from the line-just, but the wheels i think came off in the last little bit, but the conditions were slightly windy but apart from that fine. all of the runners in my team ran within about a minute of each other. i surprised my self by how close iwas to jerry hogan (14 secs) and danny randell, 36 secs, who would both normally be at least 20 secs further ahead in a 5k. i forgot how much that turn near the keepers gate hurts though. down a slope to slow down then speed up up the same hill. thats where the wheels come off for a lot of people. it perfectly defines the word evil. and the down hill section is psychologically very tough as you don't see the finish until you are about 100 yards away, you can only sense it. as for the end, well i collapsed in a heap, not a uncommon thing because as mike would say, i really put my back in to it when i train

i now look forward to greater challenges in the near future starting with the bridge inn race on tuesday night at shortwood and to be followed by the swindon half marathon. i have done a few hard longer runs in preparation for this but i have a sense that whilst i will achieve my targets time wise it will be very hard going. well all i can say after today is bring it on, i feel like i can handle anything thats thrown at me (well most things anyway)!

long run plus gym tomorrow so i'm signing off for now. time for a subway sarnie!

moving on

it is, i have reliably been informed our last session on the downs tonight due to the fading light (there's no street lighting up there)and for what looks like the only time this winter it looks like we are going to be training by the turret as opposed to the rose bush doing a circuit of the trees and bushes around there. this is the one circuit where somebody usually, no sorry always gets lost on the first two repetitions. i can't for the life of me remember what times i wass doing last year, but i'm sure that i will beat them tonight or at leat if sundays anything to go by i will.

that sundays was the 18:04 i ran for 5.2k at clevedonwhich will surely be enough for a pb on a more accurately measured 5k course. the reason why we are doing this course tonight is because of the relays on saturday which will probably mean no session on thursday. they're very early this year. the circuit has a slope which is supposed to replicate the 2 mile long hill at sutton park, which is where the race is quite often where the race is run and lost and it is just so easy to go a little too quick and my god will you suffer for it in the later stages. i know that all too well, i made that mistake last year! i'm just gonna aim to beat my time from last year (21:42 i think but not sure on that one will have to check). there'll be no going off hard this time like theer was on sunday though

road relay time-again!

it comes around very quickly each year. the north somerset road relay championships are upon us followed by the midland 6 stage next saturday. its come so quickly we've barely had chance to notice it. i'm in the b team for tomorrow one of my favourite events of the year and we have a chance of a medal, whereas our a team should walk away with the victory. afterwards as its still early i might go for another run to boost the winter mileage

back in the swing of things

i am well and truly back in the groove now after my summer recess, ready to run some fast times. however my goodwill yesterday was tempered by the fact that as of the 8th of october all postal delivery workers will now start work at 6 as opposed to 5 in the morning. but was improved by the 6.8% pay deal which was more than what we asked for which proves what i said about adam crozier being a bullshitter. still can't agree on conditions though so we may still have to walk out again in the near future. enough of that though

back on the downs tonight as we were on tuesday, we did one long rep through the avenue of trees which i have now managed to get down to 11:10, a lap of durdham down now down to 5:51, plus two half laps of he downs which were about between 3 and 5 minutes.

looking further ahead, i have now entered the bath half marathon which numerically speaking is the 2nd biggest race i have done behind the london 10k run of 2004. i am also thinking of doing the royal victoria park 4 miles which is also in bath in novenber

upping the tempo

did an 8 mile tempo run this morning. first thing straight from bed to the road, home had breakfast and straight down the gym, from where i have come straight to portishead library, where i am now. i will then go home and have lunch, and be straight back out the door towards bristol to watch and possibly help out with the bristol mile races which are being organised jointly by the british milers club, of which my coach mike down is the chairman, and clevedons international 1500 meter runner james thie. i will then be rushing up to clifton to meet up with my brother and one of his mates to go and watch england play the usa at rugby. tomorrow i will be watching the bristol half marathon and going for my long run in the evening as opposed to the traditional sunday morning long jaunt to accomodate for my interest in the half marathon and how relatively compared to previous years only a small number of my team mates will be getting on. we should still win the womens team title like we did last year. we were favourites to win the mens team title last year, but belgrave harriers did a bit of a sneaky one on us sending a few ethiopians and brit internationals up and they may well do the same this year.

talking of rugby i cannot believe the media reaction to argentinas defeat of france. i think it has borderred on disrespectful the way the have described it as a 'massive upset'. consider these facts. 1. argentina are a bloody good side who beat englands 1st team last year. 2. frances 1st team struggled to beat englands 2nd team 3. argentina have now beaten france 5 out of the past times they have played. face facts mr media who quite apparently knows nothing about sport, a new force has truly arrived on the international scene and mark my words they will one day win the world cup, within the next 20 years. its now the southern hemisphere big 4 not the southern hemisphere big 3. TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY

a wretched night

i'm back winter training and we are gradually upping the ante ready for the relays to come starting with a trial run out at the north somerset relays at clevedon towns hand staduium on sunday week. there are races going on this weekend with the hsbc cardiff 10k the bristol half marathon and the the bristol mile races, but i wont be doing either of those as i have decided to concentrate on getting my self fit rather than racing too early in the season. the cardiff 10k is too awkward to get to, the bristol half marathon i forgot to get my entry in after changing my mind about doing it, and as for the mile races, it holds to many bad memories for me from the last time i did it (namely being lapped by james thie on a short 5 and a bit lap course and having my coach mike announce it over the tannoy system). so there you have it. thats my excuses for this weekend.

alert!

this is the second post of the day. just to anounce to the world that a young lady with a most delightful pair of tits has come and sat opposite me in portishead library. thats all.

decisions decisions

i am still having trouble decinding what races to do over the winter. favourites are likely to be the swindon half marathon and the bath half marathon for starters along with the weston prom 5 milers and the bridge inn 5k. the only problem with the swindon half is that it is just one week after the oldbury on severn 10 miles, which also doubles up as the avon championships, which i would also like to race. were i to do that race as well it would undoubtedly have a big impact on my legs which could leave me recovering for a long time. the half marathon will probably take precedence were it come down to a decision. i have also made my self available for the north somerset road relay championships and the midland road relays for the club. i could do it for the national as well but i am loathe to book a day off work for that when i probably wont be needed for it. having said that, i wouldn't want a similar situation to last time when i said i wouldn't be needed, and ended up being needed but having food poisoning.

talking about illnesses, it only 21st of august and i think i have my first cold of the year, but unusually for the first one it isn't one that has brouight the rest of my life to a crippling halt (yet). don't want to tempt fate on that one though, it would be just my luck if i did get that at the most inconvenient point of the season. run and weights tonight still though followed by an huge meal and hopefully an early night and a good nights sleep! cheerio!

pain

i was down the gym last night for the first time in god knows how long today and god i suffered for it today. legs and arms have been aching all day. on top of that it feels like some ones ripped my stomach out and tied it in a knot....very nice. after running about 8 miles (or for about 50 mins) to get down there i did a variety of exercises for upper, lower body and torso, including squats, calf raises, bicep curls, tricep dips, abdominal crunches, sit ups, seated leg presses and leg raises and some exercise where you are using one or t=other of your legs to lift your whole body up to the top of a step and bring it back down again whose name i can just never remember. i was in the gym for a total of about an hour and a half before i finally managed to drag myself home. doing back extensions for my final exercise was a mistake. i hadn't any strength left with which to lift myself off the floor. i jogged about a mile home but it hasn't seemed to make any difference to how i feel today. i'm just hoping that its because my body is temporarily unaccustomed to doing weight training, some thing that i hope to put right over the next coule of weeks.

sore arms

due to the fact that not for the first time i slipped over on delivery today i have a very sore left arm/shoulder. good job that i am no longer in intensive training mode any more as knocks like that can be a bit of a bug bear (well if they were on your legs they would be). at this stage of the year it doesn't do you any harm to miss a days training as the main bits are either behind you if you're a track runner, unless you are fortunate enough to be good enough to compete in the world championships. nice to have pipe dream like that and i suppose it has to be the ultimate dream for any sports man to reach the very pinnacle of their chosen discipline. i keep getting this premonition that i'm going to be selected to run the marathon in 2012 and win in my home country. now that for me would be the ultimate experience. i've often wondered what it must be like for marathon runners when they enter the olympic stadium in the final 500 yards, no one else around you have a clear lead, and barring a spectacular collapse you are about to become an olympic champion, every thing you have dreamed of since you were a little kid and you KNOW you're about to do it...the feeling must be undescribably awesome. maybe one day i or some one i know will experience that for real and theres a better chance of it happening in the distances rather than the sprints because championship distance races tend to be slow as there are no pace makers, which gives the lesser athletes a chance as being a world record holder means absolutely jack shit in championships, it doesn't give you the knowledge of how to use that ability most efficiently. case in point steffano baldini, who is 36 and has a pb 2 or 3 minutes slower than most of the east africans, yet he has won the 2004 olympics title the 1998 and 2006 european titles along with a world championship bronze in 1999.



training wise i have managed to squeeze in 2 8 mile runs in the past 2 nights. the mileage has to start going up now ready for the start of the winter season to prepare me for the fact that i will be training for longer distances. tonight will be an easy run followed by gym work tomorrow, trying to improve strength endurance. no more races for the time being and i really have to sit and think about what i want out of my running in the short term future and ask questions like when do i want to majke the step up to the marathon. i have it planned for my early 30's for the the first one but a lot of people say that you really need at least 10 years solid training behind you to give you the best possible chance of running a fast time at london (or boston or new york or where ever). the more i try and run 3 or 400 meter reps on the track the clearer it becomes that i just don't have the speed, power or a high enough fast twitch-slow twitch muscle fibre ratio to ever be any good at it. my lactate threshold is also far too low. it will beinteresting to see what my test results say when i do the vo2 max/lactate threshold test. its supposed to give you an indication of how quick you are capable of going over every distance so i'll know when i'm banging my head agains a brick wall trying to get any quicker over whichever of the shorter distances i'm training for in the future

winter training

the autumn is almos upon us now, the nights are starting to get longer and thank god that means i don't have any sleepless nights wondering about what ideas mike will conjure up for his training sessions. some one once said that doing an 800 meter race is like burning yourself with a match while doing a marathon is like slowly roasting yourself on a spit. the burnt match is a shorter sharper, but very short lived form of pain, which is concentrated in specific areas of the body while it takes a damn sight longer to recover the from being roasted on a spit and there is quite of ten i dare to say a large amount of fear at what you know lies around the corner. i'm not thinking of doing a marathon just yet, but i am definintely going to move up in distance and do maybe a half this winter. and by that i mean one i will actually race rather than one i will just treat as a sunday morning long run like i did a t stroud last year. hence the reason why my time was so much slower than the rest of my pbs.

two races i definintely wont be doing are the brighton 10k and the BMC 4k cross country championships which are both on the same weekend. the reason for this being the vo2 max/ lactate threshold test that i am booked in to do on the following tuesday. i have been given explicit instructions by the test organisers that i am to have a light day on the sunday and do nothing on the monday, other wise it will implact quite severely on the results of the test. it may well be possible toturn up and jog around the 4k course being cross country and all that the impact on the legs would be quite minimal, but knowing how competitive i am-very-i just wouldn't be able to let people get in front of me and away from me eventually. the idea of doing a 10k which would take a couple of weeks to recover properly from two days before is really absolute madnes. so there. two races which i have done in the previous two years will both have to be ditched i favour of findind other races on other weekends. i also have the added complication of the fact that i am learning to drive which is costing me £43.50 a week, so should i still be learning by then any travel would just be out of the question. i will have to have a good search around the net and the magazines to find a decent 10k with pb potential as i am determined to get a fast time for 10k this winter and continue the improvements that i have made with my endurance. unfortunately my speed endurance hasn't improved much but there is little that can actually be done to improve speed endurance or at least not hugely like you can with out and out endurance or out and out speed. it is the one singular most important gentic factor that determines how much potential that you have as an athlete, and you just have to make the most of what you have got. i always yearn for more speed but i am starting to get older now and theres no use in saying "what if".

any way, i'm going to go and look for these races.

bye bye

pete the feet

almost all is sadid and done-for now

it looks as though i will not be racing again this summer. there was the option of doing a 1500 meter race at london heathside tomorrow, but when i weighed up the options available to me it just wasn't a viable option, because of the costs incurred travelling to london by train. i might do the avon league 3000 next weekend but only if the group continue training through next week.

on a brighter note tomorrows strike at work has been called off, and the two sides have agrreed to reach an

at a bit of a loose end

its 9:45, its pissing down with rain, i've been on the picket line since 4:35 am. not a great start to the day. still at least the two sides in this dispute have agreed to sit down and talk things over at acas. royal mail didn't really have much option after the current wave of strikes which have been going on over a two week period some thing like 80 million items of mail have been backlogged...meaning that tommorrow is going to be heavier than christmas. and saturday will be as well. the penny has finally dropped or so it seems that we aren't going to back down. cr*zier and l****ton have made a massive error of judgement if they thought that they would weaken the resolve of the union members. still if they just rehash their business plan like they did the last time they "talked" then this could have a bit more mileage but i think the end is in sight now even with a further round of talks to be announced today to agree a structure for negotiations.

talking about structure, thats some thing that i really need to put back in to my athletic career at the moment, lack of races makes it that much harder to motivate yourself. i'm going to try a 5k next wedsnesday at bitton along with the possibility of a 1500 at the south west inter-counties championships next week (although i wont be selected for the county team). the final race will be a 3000 meters at the avon league club meeting where i will be hoping for a time in the region of sub 10 minutes.

moving on to the winter or early autumn, i have sent an email off applying for a charity place in the bristol half marathon but i have heard nothing back yet. i'm just hoping that thats not another race plan that ends up falling through. this time i will actually race the half marathon, rather than just turning up a nd treating it as a gentle sunday moring jog like i did when i ran the stroud half last year.

as soon as(or within a couple of days of) finishing that 3k it will be the end of my season and i will then go back to doing the gym work hwlping to strengthen me up for the coming winter season.most of that will be done on the upper body. (low weight high repetition) along with some leg work was a way of strengthening the legs but without the constant pounding on your legs that running on the roads gives you. ok it doesn't have the aerobic benefits, but it also helps to strengthen the joits and you are also inside where you are far less susceptible to colds and viruses that are unfortunately quite common place among endurance athletes in those long cold winter months.

change of direction

due to the fact that i was unable (or unwilling to phone people and pester in to giving me a lift is closer to th truth) to get a lift to exeter last night, instead of doing the planned 1500 meters race i did a 5k road race at shortwood. i ran 17:54 which is ok considering the excesses of the weekend. not long left in the summer then i can have a break from running ;-)

final day in amsterdam back to business tomorrow

for the 1500 meter race at exeter and probably my best chance of a pb over that distance that there will be this year. i am in an internet cafe at the moment as my flight isn't until 21:40, so that leaves me plenty of time to do what i want in the mean time...been to the sex museum today, i have to say that allthough some of the artefacts are quite funny it wasn't a turn on as such, some of the pornography from times gone by was quite good. i don't want to leave this place though its so good here and england is really not the place for me at the moment, everybody i know seems to want to leave. the life style on the continent is so much better far more liberal and theres no stress here. on top of that everybody is so much healthieryou don't hardly see any fat people around here and when you dou do they do generally happen to be english. a beer belly is considered some thing to be proud of in england whereas here people would frown at such a ridiculous notion. here everyone cycles every where whereas in london its bus tube train or car for every journey. you ask for directions in london and they say "ooh its a long way...its nearly two bus stops, you'll have to catch a bus" i think i'll sign off before i get too far down the road of this discussion, i haven't got that much time!

still running

in amsterdam, ready for exeter on tuesday night, where i will be racing a 1500 meters. could be the last one of the season, depending on how the fixtures pan out. it looks like for the next avon league fixture will be either 800 or 3000 for the distance people and having done nothing like enough 800 meter speed work i feel as though that would be akin to suicide to try one with that little speed work behind me. so i will be doing the 3k instead, nothing ventured nothing gained. i should have a realistic chance of running a pb in that as i have only ever done 10:23, in a race where i stood on the start line tired and gradually got progressively worse until i was lapping at about 5 seconds a lap slower than i was at the start of the race. i don't have particularly fond memories of either of the times i ran 3000 meters on the track as it was bloody hard work both times and i ended up running on my own both lapping people and being lapped. the being lapped though was only by one person a former gb international, martin hula, who just happened to lap every body else in the field as well. on the surface lapping people sounds like fun, but when you are running for a time it is at best an inconvenience and at worst quite dispiriting, as it is rather boring runing around a rubber track on your own. it also puts you at a disadvantageif you're running for a fast time as you have to fight your way past the lapped runners (sods law is that you always catch them on the bends making you run even further than you would if you caught them in the straight). it also means that you have less people to protect you from the elemnts if the weather is bad or for slipstreming effect when the weather is good.

i set my self a target of 30 complete track sessions as well as races before the start of the season and it doesn't look like i'm going to get any where near that, for one reason and another, but mostly because i just don't think i'm going to have time before the end of season kicks in. we will be preparing for the autumn relays come the last week of august/first week of september where we will be training on the grass and roads and the rubber stuff will be left well alone until the next out door season. i have said that i will do indoor track this year if i pass my driving test. yes, that will be my "treat" to my self for getting my licence.

i have only made two trips to the red light district in amsterdam. there is so much more to do there than hookers and i have to say that the city that i have seen completely defies the image of it that some tims comes across. the museums are fascinating and they are scattered every where throughout the city. whereas the red light section is only concentrated in one small area of the city. go beyond the boundaries of the red light district and you wouldn't even know it was there. the museums them selves have been utterly fascinating. today i took advantage of a special deal between madam tussauds and the amsterdam dungeons. some of the implements of torture that they showed us were shall we say interesting, including a hook where they gave us a demonstration of where they would insert it to get "confessions" out of heretics and other forms of traitors. another one was the cage where they would a small cage, which was usually only used on prisoners who were being particularly difficult. in the cage, which would be surrounded by hot coals there would be a rat which had been starved by the jailer. the result was that the rat would eat its way through the prisoners intestines. death was inevitable but it must have been a particularly horrible way to die, slow and very painful as well

there were also exhibits of people throwing up blood (the black death) and other implements that were used in the name of god such as tongue extractors. it makes the thought of hanging or being burnt at the stake seem rather appealing. tomorrow i will be paying a visit to the amsterdam history musem as well as probably the sex museum, which is really only a small exhibition but what the hell, its there so its there to be done.

i am now starting to think about thing s i shall be doing in the time between the end of the summer season and the start of winter training. number one obviously is that i will be watching the world championships in osaka (they start their season laterthe elite athletes do not like the mere mortal club runners like my self). there will be more weight work coming in to the equation as we start to think about strengthening up again rather than speed work and horribly painful lactate acid. so i suppose there will be stints on the rowing machine and the exercise bikes to ease the enormous amount of strain that running and carrying heavy (thats heavy mr crozier not light as you like all the public to think in your propoganda war) post bags around puts on your legs

an amusing incident on the tram

more of that later...i am amazed about a few things about amsterdam. 1 it is so clean...an example that our own capital london could follow 2, contrary to london (again this could be a reccurent theme) it has an abundance of places to run. since my last post i have been for two runs around rembrandtpark. i did about 40 minutes in total that was two laps of the park and in fact it was probably safer and nicer than running around portishead-and thats without the bastard hills that i seem to spend forever running up and down

now on to this incident on the tram...nah i'll save that one for later. bye bye ;-).

50 posts....not out!

thats right, but i expect there will be more to come. well i know there will be really, its just a question of finding something to write about running wise. someone i know might count visiting a sex or peep show as training but really it isn't. i'll go for a run tonight in one of the parks, so i don't get lost being in a strange city and all that. its strange being in amsterdam no one really mentions the red light district, but if you mention it in england and its all people talk about. running wise i'll try and squeeze in about 30-35 minutes tonight, before i go out for some thing to eat, and then i don't know what i'll do theres so much to do around here in the evenings!

well here i am......................................

.................................................................in an airport departure lounge waiting for a flight to amsterdam that has so far been delayed by about 1hr 30 mins. great fun. not, but they say that the best things often get off to slow starts so maybe thats a sign of things to come.

i managed to squeeze in a run this morning of about 45 minutes or so at a relatively brisk pace but certainly not too quick. the miles have started to come back up in training recently. thats not a conscious thing and not some thing that you should be doing in the summer, but then does this feel like summer at the moment? there is a distinctly springish?late winter sort of feel at the moment with all the rain that we've been getting recently,

i read in the bristol evening post that rich peters who i think i mentioned in my last post got in to zagreb (not budapest as i originally stated) at 3:30 in the morning after rather hellish delays at heathrow, which makes his feat all the more commendable. if its a slow racehe has as good a chance as any one of gaining a medal with the flat speed he has. however every time i see him race, it seems quite apparent that he hasn't learnt the lessons of past races namey that he doesn't have what it takes to go with the tougher guys early on in the race...but the pace always seems too slow for him and he goes to the front tries to run the legs off his opponents and ends up hurting himself more than he hurts the opposition. of the three brothers that train with us he unquestionably has the greater natural talent, while older brother craig has the dedication and the commitment. younger brother matt is a good cross country runner and some thing of an enigma and seems to lack the concentration skills, but he is still growing and developing at a quite frighteningly fast rate.

as for the the tour de france, well what can be said about that that hasn't already been said. whilst machael rasmussen hasn't failed a test, the evidence of him cheating is quite damning if not conclusive although he has responded by saying that the entire case about him lying about his whereabouts was based on one person saying that he recognised him on a training ride in italy when he had told the team thathe was supposed to be in mexico, his winter residence. we shall see what we shall see on that one although several riders said in inteerviews today that they "knew" or were "convinced" that he had done some thing naughty. as for alexandre vinokourovs protestations of innocence claiming that having two different types of blood globules because of the crashes, and that he was being "stitched up", well change the record please mate its broken. the sooner they start jailing these people and treating them like the criminals they are, the sooner they'll start thinking twice before they break the law. they are depriving the hard working innocent cyclists whoo are prepared to put themselves through pain in search of glory of the income that they rightly deserve above these scumbags that cheat.

i am looking forward to exeter on tuesday night where it looks, weather permitting, as though i will be running a 1500 meter race and the target time that i set at the start of the season was 4:30 but i would take 4:32 now considering the difficulty that i have had in finding races. still got to sort out transport for that one that will be done at about midnight on monday!

600's yesterday 69's tomorrow

final training session before the trip to amsterdam tomorrow, four nights oflying on my back and thinking of england...the session last night was a down and up the clock session. two 600's lap jog recovery, 4x300 lap jog recovery 2x500. i hit the target times for all of the repetitions that i did so i was quite pleased with that...a sure indication that i can go under 4:30 come tuesday night. the next challenge for me is to find some where to run around amsterdam. i have no doubt that there will be plenty of parks that i can go around of an evening time but we'll have to wait and see on that one.

the next bit of news is that after a few years of promising my self that i would do it, i have booked myself in for a VO2 maximal effort test on tuesday the 20th of november at a cost of £108. a lot of money i know but money well spent if it helps to point me in the right direction. some people have said to me its a waste of money, but people like jo pavey, helen clitheroe, paula radcliffe, mo farah, et al all use them quite regularly and find them quite useful. its a long way off i know but when you're a reserve post man working for the royal mail, its can be quite hard to get time off when you need it.

which brings me on to the next subject. front page of the daily mirror yesterday, our pension funds being slashed/raided while the managers pension fund will remain unaffected (isn't that a coincidence, why do the people at ground level always pay for the errors of the top lavel managers?). all i am saying is that yet again crozier and leightons true colours have been shown in spite of all their posturing and denials and other bullshit that comes out of their mouths. like the now infamous "we'll have you on £400 a week asap" they told us last year. make your own minds up....

the last chance saloon

for a pb this summer of 1500 meters will quite probably come at exeter in the 1500 meter races on tuesday night-providing i come back intact from amsterdam. all the indicators in training point towards me running some thing in the region of 4:32/4:34 which would be nice. not what i was hoping for at the start of the season but when you consider the lack of opportunities that have come my way to run decent times i would take that now. it's unfortunately a catch 22 situation with me not getting the opportunities to run fast times because there are no races for me to do it in and not being able to get in to races because i haven't run the fast times. and then when an opportunity does come my way i have just found at, to compound my frustration, that the meeting at cheltenham has been cancelled due to an act of god called major flooding. if i don't get any more pbs this summer i will just have to take it on the chin and hope that the 1500 meter specific training on the track that i have done this summer will benefit me come the winter when i return to racing over 5ks 10ks and half marathons.

i have been looking at possible races for the winter and the first ones that i have definiotely decided that i am doing are the bridge inn races (held every month at shortwood) and the avon ten mile championships along with probably the bath half marathon. there will definintely be more added to this list probably races in london and brighton as well as bristol. one thing is definitely confirmed though. i am giving up 800 meter races next summer. official, you heard it here first. back to the immediate future though, there's a track session to get through tonight though, one of just a few that remain until the summer is over and we can reurn to running on the cross country and the road. what fun

mixed feelings about today

what was bad about today? not setting a new 1500 meter pb, when i know i'm in good enough shape to do it is very annoying. the weather is a fucking joke as well. no wind today so there was no excuses on that part, it was though pissing it down with rain, not that rain makes much difference to the times, it just makes the mood worse.

the good things? well there was just one small thing...it was the fastest 1500 meters i have done in afternoon race and also the fastest i have done at yate track. sorry i'm being a bit of a tony blair here trying to put a positive spin on some thing that really deserves not very much credit at all. but i am getting better at putting a positive spin on any thing that doesn't go exactly how i want it to. in the past i might have gone in to a bit of a sulk especially if i had been utterly humiliated by people that i would usually utterly humiliate in one of my many disasterous cross country races. but i'll save any gripes about that til the cross country season.

the time i did today was 4:42.8. i have accepted the fact that i will never be an olympic champion, but i would like a greater reward for all the hard work i put in than a slap in the face like that time is. oh well back to the drawing board for the next race which is more than likely to be the 1500 meters at exeter in two weeks time, but i really hope that i can find some thing before that.

but then if you want to put some proper perspective on things i would rather be in the position that i am in than that of the long jumper who got hit by a stray javelin on friday night. he was one lucky boy to survive an accident like that...

a nice realxig easy day

ahead of the pain that will come tomorrow and the chaos that the result of the strike will bring on monday (hopefully) although i did rear in a communication that there had been developments in talks between the union and the top bods at royal mail. they didn't elaborate on what these developments were though.

today though sees the first time the english schools championships is televised and there are several local athletes of note attending including rich peters who should be one of the favourites to win the 1500 meters providing that his legs can hold out if he has to run heats and emma reed (sister of gb international kate reed) in the senior girls 1500m. its televised on sky sports this year so its a real opportunity to showcase some of the talents that will(hopefully) be medal contenders come 2012.

as for myself i can for the moment only dream of being that good...maybe i will be a lot better but unfortunately i think where my strenghths lie eg road running is only an olympic sport at marathon level although there is a seperate world championships for the half marathon. but i'm not even good enough to compete at midland championship level let alone national or international. thats just a home truth that i have to face up to difficult though it can be. silly though it may sound, it can be quite difficult some times to remember that your levels of natural ability aren't your fault, they are just some thing that you are born with and you have to like it or lump it and just make the best of what you have got and try not to think about what you haven't got.

i decided to ditch the idea of running a 5000 meter race tomorrow after consulting with mike about it. we both agreed that i haven't done long enough intervals on the track to make it worth going for. but i know what will happen now i'll have to make a point of turning up after the start so i don't get conned by the team manager martin davies into doing it "for he club" as he puts it...

another day another painful track session

speed work just doesn't get any easier, but as the americans say, no pain no gain. an old saying maybe but there's still as much truth in it as there was when it was first said. last night didn't turn out to be the 5000 meter session that was promised, thank god, so it will be the 1500 meters on saturday after all and i will be trying at least for a pb. don't hold your breath though, because yate is not a track where i have run particularly well in the track, so the wheels may yet come off.

i have looked at the target times to get on the national rankings i need 4:24 to get on the rankings for 1500, 950 for 3k and 17:00 for the 5000. all of those will surely be attainable within the next couple of years. they also want 35:00 for the 10k road and 36:00 for the 10,000. surley those two should be the other way around though?

thinking positively

i am refusing to think that last nights showing in my mile race at cheltenham was a disaster after all it would be quite easy to think that it was. i was after all 3rd in my race a long time since i have hit such heady heights. really i need to shake off some of the cobwebs from not racing in time for the bmc 1500 meter races down at exeter on tuesday the 31st of this month. that race will represent the best chance of me getting a pb. there is also an avon league meeting on sunday where there is a 5000 and a 1500. i will probably do the 1500 but for the first time evere i find the thought of doing a 5000 meter race quite tempting. not sure why that is as we haven't done any 5000 meter specific work this year at all. with the guys doing the 5000's at the bmc grand prix on this weekend i may well find my self thrust in to a longert session tonight though unless mike decides to give me something to do. yate has never been a track that i have run particularly well on in the past i would be pleasntly surpised if i did manage to squeeze out a pb there. i have to take advantage of this opportunity because the way things are going i am struggling to find races at the moment which is annoying because it just puts more pressure on me to get my targets when i do race.

as for last night for the early part of the race i was well in touch with the leaders but they gradually pulled away from me and the more detatched i got the harder it is to run hard. the annoying thing about it is that i came away feeling like i could have run harder and i was in a training mindset where i was expecting there to be more repetitions after the race hopefully it will help to focus my mind ahead of sunday though!

an easy weekend by the seaside

or at least i slept two nights by the seaside in brighton as abase for going to watch the tour de france in london and kent. hyde park was where wed decided to gop and watch the race on saturday afternoon with the aid of the big screen. there were around 1 million people in the park alone i think all hoping for a victory for local boy bradley wiggins but he had to make do with fourth after a remarkable performance by fabien cancellara gave him a 13 second lead going in to the next day.

canterbury in kent wasn't so good in terms of the racing but was a far more delightful town than london and we were even shown a ducking stool which witches were put on trial on in medieval times. they were dunked under neath the water and if they drowned they were inocent and if they lived they were guilty. a very primitive form of justice a which sounds more like an excuse to kill people thenany thing else.

as for the running this weekend it was very much a case of less is more as i stuck to a diet of shortish steady runs, which was probably just what the doctor ordered after the beasting my legs have taken over the last week or so. i didn't even bother doing a long run this sunday, oh well missing one of them wont hurt too much just don't make a habit of doing it! my legs certainly feel much better after doing some thing easy.

time is nigh that i started planning my winter race schedule. i wont be saying anything about what i will and wont be doing untile i know for definite but what i will say is that it will be roads with the odd bit of cross country all over 5k and 10k with a 10 miler and a half marathon chucked in for good measure...but thats for the future and this is the here and now. next race is the cheltenham midsummer games open mile onwednesday, which will mean missing training on tuesday evening and doing hard stuff two days in a row quite possibly. this will be followed by a 5000 and/or 1500 meter race at a league meeting at yate. i am quite looking forward to doing some more endurance related stuff at the moment as out and out speedwork/speed endurance work can be rather painful at the best of times. endurance training for 1500 doesn't involve any thing ;ike the same amount of discomfort that you would get either for 5k/10k work or marathons, even so its still tiring, but you don't get to that point at the end of the session where you just curl up in a pathetic heap gulping for air, with lactic acid coming out of your eye balls (yes i've pushed my self that hard some times folks and it hurt)

i'm back!

after a long absence i have finally decided to get off my arse and do some thing about updating this blog. still training on the track and i feel a hell of a lot more comforatble about running on the track than i did at the start of the season. one thing has been decided though...this will be my last year of running 800m races unless i get a pb which by the looks of things isn't going to happen as there don't seem to be the races around. there are two race options that are open to me next week. i could do a mile or a 600 (as opposed to a 1500) at cheltenham, or i could make the long jaunt up to watford for the bmc 1500 meter graded races. that sounds more appealing, but i think most of the people who would be likely to do that are on holiday or some other excuse.

the most recent session we did was a 1500 meter session 4x500 then 4x400. i managed to hit 1:30 exactly for all the 500's, thats 72 second pace which translates to 4:30 and the 400's i managed 68 68 69 and 71. the problem i have had with doing sets of 400's at the end of a session is that i have been going reasonably well for the first three of them and then the last on is like i've just run in to a brick wall or something. it is not some thing that i have encountered in my winter training, so this leads me to two conclusions. firstly that this is a problem that is symptomatic of this thime of year and is therefore likely to be realted to hayfever. secondly to my uninitiated mind it is a problem that is specifically affecting my speed endurance but NOT my speed or my endurance. it may need blood tests to get to the route of the problem. i never realised until monday that it may be a medical problem until after mentioning it to several of the guys in conversation after the session that they were a) all having the same problem and b) were all hayfever sufferers (why do so many endurance athletes suffer from hayfever?)

since monday its just been a diet of steady paced 5 or 6 mile runs once a day although i might go out again in the evening tonight. we're doing some 1200 meter time trials tomorrow on the track so mike wants us completely fresh for them. if i don't race atwatford or cheltenham though the next race isn't until the 15th. i am getting very frustrated witgh the lack of track races being advertised....

turning up the heat

its starting to get hot and summer is well and truly upon us. the pollen count is unfortunately rather high at the moment which means that i am sneezing rather a lot but hopefully that means that when it all clears up i will be running faster. we still havn't done any thing remarkably fast yet no real out and out speed and to me the fact that i am running pb's without having done that demonstrates that a i am in pretty good shape and b i can still get a lot faster. you can never really tel how much faster though until get there, when people ask you how good you will be its like the old proverbial question about 'how longs a piece of string' which you can never truly answer until you get to the end, you can only prophesize about it. i will be happy with what i have done at 800's and 1500's if i get close to 2minutes and 4 minutes respectively but thats a long way in the future for now. i intend to make the most of all the speed i can get out of the shorter distances before i think about new challenges that lie ahead. i do feel as though my strength lies in middle distance road races rather than on the track as i feel as though i lack the speed to be really competitive at 800 meters. the thought of doing a duathlon (but not a triathlon as i can't swim) has often been at the fore front of my mind and maybe its some thing i could become good at who knows?

a hard week

but it was sure worth it. started with a 1500 meter pb at exeter and a hard session on thursday after the heaviest day at work i can remember outside of christmas, thanks to about 60 odd inch thich catalogues from boots and the national trust (strange how it came through the day after the deadline for strike vote) thursdays session was 2x800 and 4x400 all with short recoveries the 800's were both 2:27 and the 400's were 69 68 69 and 70. was abit annoyed about the last one as they would all of been under 70 for the 1st time this year if it wasn't for that. running on the grass seems to be working as the old knee lift is coming back

two sessions have been run by me on the track since the last update i did. the firrst one was 3 x 800 with 1x 400. sounds easy but it sure as hell wasn't. times i recorded were 2:28, 2:28 and 2:26 with a 69 400. the last 800 would have been quicker had it not been for a fall by one of my training partners which forced me to check my step. last night was 3x500 4x400 5x300 with long recoveries. i recorded 91, 90 and 90: 68, 69 69 and 70; 48 49 5051 and 52. the last one would of been quicker had i not dallied getting to the 300 start w=due to breathlessness.

switched to running on grass and will try that for the rest of the season and i could certainly feel a difference in my legs in terms of how bouncy they feel last night. whereras before i was feeling quite often like i wa taking a while to get going after a thorough warm last night up i was tearing it up all night. voted to go on strike today

another day another session...

but its all in the good name of getting fit and healthy and looking after ones self etc etc. tonight will be the eighth track session of my season, my how time flies. soon it will be time to start thinking about times for 800 meter races and posibly the odd 400 as well. the training has been going quite well recently but the distinct lak of track meetings makes it very hard to run times on the track. the recent trend towards mass participation road running has meant that we have bred an entire generation of people who are just joggers rather than competitive athletes. the league structure does absolutely nothing as you can turn up at a meeting and there is no guarantee that you will be in a race. very little gets advertised in athletics weekly that is suitable for my self in terms of venue or time which is where the problem lies with regards to my lack of improvement.

there are also more technical aspects of my running that i feel i could improve a lot more such as using my arms more, learning how to run a bend (they say the way to do it is to run it like it is three straights) and being more onmy toes when i run ie not being so flat footed. hayfever has been quite bad these past couple of days, my eyes have been a bit sore and my nose qite runny, but the runny nose bit i suppose is no ddiffererent to usual.

on a different note i was disappointed not to be able to seeany coverage of the loughborough meeting this year and i know nothing about how the brits got on. i think the bbc's attitude towards athletics demonstrates a complete apathy towards any thing that is not a major international meeting or a world (or aaa's) championships in any sport apart from football and even then there are some of the football fraternity who are saying that the number of games that are on tv are damaging the game becaues the quality or the status of the match is not good enough. maybe one day i will appear on tv, who knows but i feel that my real strength lies in short distance road races, where there is no real profile apart from in local newspapers. that may change once i get truly used to running on the track but how often does a leopard change its spots?

well the track session on thursday night was longer than i expected. given the factr that the evening was quite warm i was expecting something quite short, but i was disappointed in that respect. 1x1600 meters, 2x800 meters 4x400 meters. the mile was done in 5:17, the 800's in 2:30 and 2:31 while the 400's were 68, 68, 70 and 71 followed by a collapse in a pathetic heap when i crossed the line for the final time. the internationals do their traditional season opener i'm not making any predictions though but i think this could be a break through year for the european 60m finalist ryan scott, who was disappointed to run 'only' 10.59 for 100 meters at the busa champs, hoping he could get a pb of 10.51. back to me mike said that the reason he feels that i'm not getting used to the track is that i'm to flat footed from running on the roads all the time but i think i'm naturally like that whch is why i feel the road is my strongest surface. must shoot now

still reeling

from the realisation that i could have won the county championships this weekend. and from running badly (or well according to everybody else) at millfield. but then it was windy but you shouldn't start making excuses for bad performances. the frustrating part is that i now have to wait until the tues day after the may bank holiday weekend before i can race again unless by some miracle i get a saturday off for a league meeting or an open meeting. some how i just don't think thats going to happen though, considering the answer has been 'no' virtually every single time i've asked for time off this year. with all the talk of strike action going on at work it looks like it could be a long summer. even at this time of year i don't fancy the thought of standing around outside in the cold at 5 in the morning. it usually gets resolved though but being asked to take on extra work 5 door 2 door items intead of 3 and only getting paid for 3 and being offered only 2.5% when infaltions at 4% is an absolutely disgraceful offer. its equivalent to a pay decrease in return for doing more work and a lot of people are quite annoyed about this insulting offer.

back to matters athletics another list of targets has been added to my list of targets for the season. a county vest on the track at the south west inter counties championships. thats if its not on my amsterdam weekend. but athletics is not my main target for the summer or at least for the next couple of weeks. passing the driving test is the main target as that will give me so much independence.

on to mondays session for the 1500 meter guys which was basically me and err me and no body else it was as follows: 4 x 600 with a long recovery. took me a while to wake up but in the end i did 1:49, 1:47 1:45 and 1:43, so two seconds off every time. it wasn't effort it was just a question of waking the legs up

on track

well it was windy last night so times were almost completely irrelevant at last nights track session. the session was split in to 3 groups, depending on whether you were targeting 1500, 3000's or 5000's for the summer. the actual session was 800, 1 min recovery 400, up to a maximum of 6, which only one real hardcore member of the group completed. 4 for the 3000 guys and 3 for the speedsters doing the 1500's, which was just me and youngster matt peters. in my case i would use the word fast in inverted commas though. still haven't actually put my spikes on yet but i have a feeling that i will be doing it for the first time for tomorrows session with a race on bank holiday monday which is just around the corner i feel it is now time to get down to business. i feel as though the speed and strength are there to run a pb for 1500 meters but it would require much better weather conditions than last night. the wind was just too strong. the track at millfield though is much more sheltered than the one at filton and hopefully that can work to my advantage. times for last night, in the order that i did them were 2:30, 1:12, 2:35, 1:15, 2:32, 1:09. 0n the last rep i inadvertently deprived my self of 15 seconds of recovery by going with a different group to what was planned for me. i even managed to pick off a few of the quicker guys who had gone off too quick and they were clearly paying for that by this stage.

tomorrows going to be a real test for me in one other sense as well as how fast i am. i have very little confidence i the spikes that i am wearing. i do need to sort out a new pair but with driving lessons and a trip to amsterdam to pay for this summer finances are rather tight, so that will probably have to wait. they were always ok over the longer distances like the 5ks 3ks and 15s last year but they seemed to lack the support necessary to be able to run fast over 800 meters. it sounds like a small thing to the uninitiated i know but a track runners relationship with his spikes is like a snooker players with his cue or a like a golfer would feel about his clubs. new 2mm studs are needed as well as they quite often come loose when you run in them as well.

i still feel confident about this season its just that i need a couple of fast races as a confidence boost before things really start to materialise in terms of times