b****cks at bath

well i managed to drag my self out of bed for the team bath 5k at 6:30 in the morning and quite frankly, i wish i hadn't bothered. it was utterly rubbish. 17:53 was the piece of s**te that i ran today. embarrasing is the word. jonathan goodland was ill and he still beat me or so he said he was any way. it was a two lap course and i managed to stay in touch with where i wanted to be for about the first lap and three quarters, but after that we went through a twisty turny section of the course and for no apparent reason other than the fact that i can't run i just lost about 60 or 70 yards. those twist and turns are quite difficult for me being 6 foot 5 and as rob whalley was explaining to me afterwards, you have to learn to run the optimum route for yourself around the corners, ie go around the corners at as close to maximum speed as you can without going too wide but also not cutting too close to the corner so you don't have to slow right down and end up screwing yourself over un neccessarily because you are constantly having to accelerate out of the corners, which is an inefficient use of energy.

still i suppose when you f**k up you just have to learn the lessons that are there to be learnt and apply them to the next time you race or whatever. one thng that also annoys me is that i can't seem to race as well as i train and i can think of no explanation as to why whatsoever. i'll be up with people in training and come race time they'll be in some cases over a minutre ahead of me. i've looked in training manuals and everything and none of them seem to offer any explanantion that makes any real sense to me. oh well i suppose its back to the drawing board for now, as my dream of beating 17 minutes is obviously far too ambitious for the moment. i still want to do the 10k at the same venue for the moment as apparently the course is quite fast, so may be there is potential for a big pb there as people were running fairly fast times there last year. there was a time earlier this winter when i would have been delighted with an time under 18 minutes but my mind has moved on since then and is really ready for a sub 17 minute time but it looks as though i may well have to be patient and wait a while before my body and mind are thinking along the same lines. i am sure it will happen at some point but it looks very much unlike it will happen at any point in the immediate future. not sure whats next on the race calender but i want to get some thing else organised to make up for the disappointment today. the wind was a factor as well today, but i'm sure it wasn't 14 seconds.