fine tuning preparations

its all about next weekend now. the midland road relay championships are almost upon us and the next few days are all about fine tuning our preparations so that we are ready to run the leg of our lives next weekend and the two weeks later in the national. thursdays session on the hills at sneyd park was a short but tough one with 6 uphill repetitions of about 1.1 kilometers. there was only a small crowd of 4 of us out, that was me craig peters, jerry hogan and the seemingly indefatigueable dave austin. craig was about 20-25 secs out in front per rep with me leading the chasing group, or just me on my own for the final two reps after the othertwo dropped out due to fatigue from races at the weekend. i managed times of 3:34 3;33, 3:26, 3:30 3:28 and 3:28 for the 1st two i rather felt like i was coasting a little bit too much but it was a deliberate tactic to ease my self in to the session rather than go hell for leather in the first couple of reps and as it turned out it was probably the right thing and i really started to absolutely crucify my self on the 3rd rep with a significant change of pace and by the end of the session especially after having to run the last two reps on my own i was literally out on my feet and could't have run another step if i wanted to. unusually for a saturday there is a session this afternoon, which i will be attending, but it will be just me and craig this time a 4k tempo run around the streets of coombe dingle. the two objective of the session will be to be the 1st home and to beat my time from the previous time we did it 13:25, i will though be given a two minute head start on one of the rising stars of british athletics. with a final session on tuesday evening it will then be a case of resting and keeping the old legs ticking over for saturday to make sure that a our a teams wins and b our b team is the 1st b team and we both make the top 20 and qualify for the national 12 stage on april 14th. may the force be with us!