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