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 ;-)