highs and lows

the good news is that i have finally passd my driving test-thats a monkey off my back. the bad news is that i wont be ableto run the midland relay championships-owing entirely to a fuck up made by the royal mail management losing a holiday request form...not happy about that! this pretty much means that my winter racing season is over although there will be one more week of training which i will use as a base for my summer season, where 1500's 3000's and 5k's will be target distance. as prepartation for this i will be doing a 2.2 mile time trial tonight after the boat race and the cycling have ended (come on oxford!) and city hopefully have ended their bed period with a win against norwich, which they can hopefully use as a springboard for the rest of the campaign. i'm off to have a look at the bookies websites now...

a scary thought

it has only just occurred to me that after last nights session at sneyd park that there are now only 2 sessions left thiss winter before we have our break and come back for the track season. after the midland road relays i will take a break of a week from all forms of training (maybe a week and a half before getting back down to the nitty gritty). too much is up in the air at the minute for me to be making race plans-namely my driving test-get that out of the way and it will make life ten times easier with regards to travelling especially for track meetings which tend to be a long way away from cities like bristol, because of our embarrasingly poor facilities. that could be quite an embarrassment for the city because we're hosting the kenyan olympic team in 2012 and both the local tracks could be being relaid at that time. bristol city council is hardly renowned locally for its pr skills but that would be quite a disasterous own goal

near the end and still no 10k pb....

one of my stated aims for this winter season was a pb over 10k on the road, to beat my current time of 37:22 which was set over a year ago. i was due to race at yeovilton on easter monday, but my neighbour let me down because he did a 24 miler on the sunday in preparation for london as his final long run before the big one. i then rang around every person i know that i thought might be going and the excuses were all the same-either they weren't going or their cars were full. after about an hour ringing round people i had exhausted every possible lead and had to give up. i no have no excuse for not doing sneyd park hills tonight which is a tough session at the best of times probably more painful than a 10k race...bastards.

whats even more annoying is that after my run down at weston super mare on the prom last thursday (i ran 29:23 seven secs outside my pb in very windy conditions) night i really feel as if i am in shape to take a considerable amount of time off my 10k time. the 5k's i'm not too worried about as when i hopefully pass my driving test on thursday there are several series that they run locally which are quite quick over the summer. as for the 10k's i will be keeping my eye out for a race this saturday as it is my rota day off but so far my options seem to be either a 5 miler in bexleyheath or a 4k cross country in gloucestershire, non of which seem like perfect options but hey beggars can't be choosers. on the other hand i may need saturday free to go and buy a car which would involve a trip to newport. on the other hand though in the long term that would open up my options considerably and i would hopefully never have to worry about lifts again. thats a nice thought to finish on!

An easy tuesday

lazy bugger me didn't bother training last night, i just went for a run instead. there were reasons for this whic i shall explain as thus. the local bus company in their infinite wisdom have decided that the best way to get the people to use buses is by cutting the service so there are no buses that where i wanted them to go at the time i wanted. going would have meant either leaving the house at half past four and waiting for two hours for others to turn up or turning up late as my lift decided she wasn't going to go either. in light of the fact that i have a race on thursday and yesterday my legs were still hurting from the half marathon i decided to give it a miss...

the race on thursday is the usual caper down at weston super mare the 5 mile road (or pavement race) up and down the promenade. time estimates will vary depending on what the weather is like. the latest forecast is to expect snow over easter, but as long as there are no winds with that (but some how i doubt it) the times should be fast. now that my legs have almost recovered from sunday, i would be disappointed if i didn't get under 29:30.

thoroughly beaten up

after the debacle of the last two miles at bath (i was on for about 1:20til the cramps in the stomach and legs took over) i have learned a couple of things the hard way. 1 don't do long distance races til you are strong enough to be able to handle them-i am not, i don't do any thing like enough miles to be ab;e to compete in them as well as i can in 5k's or 10k's. 2 crucial this one-take on board enough energy during the race or you wil cramp and when that happens there is nothing you can do to stop the slow down. i took on board nothing at all as i can't tolerate sports energy drinks while i'm running. 3 my optimum distances are between 5 and 10k 4 you need the concentration span of a zombie to be able to run good long distance races.

the one highlight of the day was meeting a young oxford graduate called becky in the food tent afterwards. if she had lived a bit closer too home i would have asked her for a number. aztec west tonight if i can get a lift but some how i don't think i will as i am racing a 5 miler down at weston on thursday and i wont be going if i can't get a lift, i ache too much

i must make this more regular

hello again after another long break from my blog. i really must get my act together and update it far more often. there have been some changes in my athletic life since we last spoke the major one being that from now on i will be doing 3 quality sessions a week or two quality sessions plus a race, one of which i will be doing on saturday evenings. i did the first one of these last weekend and i misunderstood what mike wanted me to do and consequently ended up doing about 5 minutes too much. It doesn't sound like a great deal to some one who runs 50 miles a week and works on his feet. it meant that i reached my lactate turn point about halfway through the 2nd rep and when lactic acid is just flooding in to your blood for 6 or 7 minutes it can make life rather uncomfortable. i managed to sustain the same pace-just-throughout the session but i don't think i have ever worked so hard in a session since the track season and certainly never on the road. the idea of doing this is to improve lactate tolerance (the amount of lactic acid you can handle in your blood) and the lactate turn point (the point at which the heart rate stops raising and the volumes of blood lactate start to raise dramatically). muscles utilise lactic acid as it is the substance that makes them move. however with intense exercisethey need more lactic acid but some times this means that they over load and it spills over in to the bloodstream, causing limbs to get heavier and more painful until eventually the body can take no more and you have to stop. the best analogy for this is that muscles are like buckets with small holes in the bottom. i may have done too much but it pushed me out of my comfort zone which i feel is what i need to help push me past the plateau i feel like i havereached over the past couple of months.

tonight with the midland relays in mind we will be doing an interval session on the hills at clifton prom, a thought which seems positively appetising after the agony i put my self through on saturday (i have slept very well since then). between now and sunday week there will be 4 more interval sessions a long run and a visit to city v watford at ashton gate on a week today