taking it easy

for the past couple of days i have been feeling absolutely exhausted. there is no question that there is some thing wrong with me, well physically at least i am used to people telling me that i'm slightly mad. all i have managed to do for the past couple of days is steady running, i just haven't had the energy to run hard. did an hour steady this morning thats the longest i done since wednesday. apart from that my life has been work, read books and sleep. went to the doctor on wednesday and he agreed that i need to be referred to the nurses for a blood test, where they will check me for everything. i may try and do the session on the tuesday night just to make the results look worse than they actually are, becqause obviously there has to be a cut off point where they refuse people treatment and its an all or nothing scenario, in that if your iron or ferretin levels aren't low enough than all they will say is to take the boots multi vitamin and iron tablets, which i am already taking any way and really they aren't strong enough for what i need.

maybe its just a phase i'm going through but i keep on having dreams that im going to take up triathlon over the summer instead of the track, but with the winter i'm having i don't know if i'll be strong enough by the time summer comes along. i'm hardly doing any long runs as i just feel so tired at the moment. another dream i had recently was that i found a fifty pound note on the floor and every time i picked it up another one appeared in the same place. and i also dreamed i pulled celine dion in a bar in london, but i think that is quite likely to stay as a fantasy

unbelievably bad

after producing arguably the worst performance of my life at weston on thursday i consulted my coach mike via the phone and from what he has seen of me and the symptoms that i am describing he is almost certain that i'm anemic. this means that i currently have a lack of iron in my blood and/or my haemoglobin/ferretin levels are low, which consequently means that i have a lack of oxygen in my blood. a course of iron tablets would sort it out but to get the right ones at the right strengthyou would have to be prescribed them and prescriptions of course mean referals and blood tests and it may even mean that i have to take some time off training in order for my body to replenish it self although i sincerely hope it wont come to that. weston was a bit of a disaster, i mean i even got beaten by a woman for godssake, some thing that has never happened to me down there before. at 30 minutes and 30 seconds that is the second slowest time i have run on that course. and frankly if i had known i was going to run that badly i wouldn't even of bothered getting out of bed in the morning and i would have stayed there all day as the whole race was just a waste of time. so priority number one now is to get healthy again before i start thinking about running fast times, as they will not come if i'm anemic. only then will i start to think about what times i will be aiming for by the end of the winter and not before.

i am though using the spare time to look for races and there is a 5k and a 4 miler coming up in burnham on sea before the end of the year so i will be entering them. the 4 miler will be 5 days before the clevedon boxing day 4 so it will be perfect preparation for that race. the only difference though is that all competitors at burnham have to wear a bell around their neck, which will probably start to irritate me but if it does i will find some way of discreetly disposing of it, probably in a bush half way around the course!

prom run tonight

legs are still a bit tired from the time trial i did on tuesday night, but may be thats not such a bad thing as most of my bad races have been run on fresh legs. a bit strange really but true all the same. i remember the last time i did one of these races i was knackered at the start from having to sprint round my round in the morning to get to bristol in time for my mate jocks funeral, but i still finished within 4 seconds of my pb! then on sunday there's the bmc 4k cross country championships on bristol downs. this is the second longest running cross country race in britain behind 'the national' and used to attract quality fields to match a race of such history. however since the iaaf decided to do away with the short course race at the world championships interest has declined as people have decided to concentrate on the longer event in order to secure their place on the team for that. sad really but thats the changing nature of the sport in which we compete and we have to go with it or the sport will die. i have huge doubts over the competitive benefits for the sport of mass participation marathons etc as they have produced a generation of joggers who aren't interested in competing properly and are only looking to get round. but the problem is money talks but london marathon and great run, the two big race organising companies aren't interested in re-investing in the sport that sustains them and this is one of many reasons why gb is struggling to compete against the top european nations let alone the likes of kenya and eithiopia. aside from that we have also produced a generation of youngsters in this country that are frankly bone idle and expect things to be done for them and they're too frightened of hard work

i managed to push through the pin barrier last night

i hope this isn't yet another example of me doing it in training but not in a race. did the 4k loop round coombe dingle which i managed in 14:17. well some one said they measured it to be exactly 4k, but i expect that to be some what of a mis truth, i reckon 4.1 is nearer the truth. not sure what my fastest time round there is but i reckon it's faster than that. will get a better idea when i do the weston race tomorrow night. the time works out at 3:34 per kilometer, which equates to about 17:50 over a 5k and i just know i'm faster than that at the moment. we'll see though.

next week when i go back to work i will start doing the weight training again, but it will be leg weights only this time. i have a book on weight training for runners tucked away at home some where and i intend to consult it. the problem with the upper body stuff is that i bulk up too easily but any thing on the legs is bound to be beneficial. my legs though are still sore from the pounding they took last night to do any thing hard today. i've been out once today already and i will again tonight but recovery runs can some times seem harder than the sessions themselves and that was certainly the way it felt today

went out on a steady run last night

was running down unlit roads, thought i'd be ok, until my headlight battery went half way through the run, so i couldn't see where i was going! this was along a 60 mph road, so it was a little bit scary really but thats not going to be enough to put me off. training tonight at coombe dingle, don't have any idea what the sessions going to be but i'll go up there for a nice hard run out. i get annoyed with my self though because i always seem to save my best performances for training and i can go in to a race feeling just as fresh and not perform. why? well if i had the answer to that i wouldn't be sat here typing this but worst of all it seems to affect the races where time matters as they represent the best chance of gettting a fast time. i'm still anoyed with my self for this sunday as within a few minutes of the coughing fit coming on i felt fine again. but then if i had finished the race i would have done a shit time, just for the sake of finishing, which to me is not the objective of shorter races like 10k's or 5k's. marathons or half marathons yes, but not shorter races. looking ahead i will run weston on thursday evening which is a race very similar to brighton only it is 5 miles not 10k and it is a 2 lap course not one. there will also be a 5k on tuesday and a 4k cross country on sunday (did i mention this yesterday?) i'm cramming these races in now because shortly every thing will be winding down for the festive season and then there will be nothing til the traditional boxing day races in clevedon apart from the avon and somerset cross country champs on the first weekend in december, where hopefully i will repeat my gold medal winning performance of last year. that was the team gold not individual which seems a long way off at the moment

bad day at the office

it was just a bad day at the office yesterday, something that was translated in my failure to finish the brighton 10k, brought on by a coughing fit. not something that happens very often when you're running but i seem to remember commenting last week that i'd been struggling with a cold in the days leading up to the race. while i'm here i'd also like to take the opportunity to say thanks to jon and rosie for putting up with me for the weekend. i'm wondering whether or not recent poor performances were caused by some sort of physiological problem and i'm going to get some blood tests organised to try and determine whether or not that is the case. it has been mentioned before that my iron levels and my red blood cell count were very low even when i was running quite well earlier this year.

there are more races coming up such as the weston prom run on thursday evening and the bridge inn 5k on the following tuesday, plus a short course cross country race in bristol so i could possibly be quite tired by next week!

i'm sticking to my promises

twice a day so far this week-even if yesterday morning was only 20 minutes. mind you though i "sessioned" in the evening at coombe dingle so its ok. i did flunk the last 2 minute rep (the session was an up and down the clock session 6 minutes, 2mins recovery, 4 mins, 1:30 recovery, 2 mins, 1 minute rcovery, then the same but in reverse, followed by a 2 minute rep at the end). my legs were still in the process of recovering from the ultra tough wiltshire 10k on sunday. two huge hills in the middle and start of the race put paid to any hope of a fast time. i was running 3:36 ks comfortably til then. until i was confronted by these monsters. one of them was bigger and steeper than the hill that john martin and that other "runner" scott roberts lived on in brighton (or rather scott still does) and the other one was about the same. the bigger one was steeper than that and by the time i had it out the way it was a question of just holding on. that and the wind meant you weren't gaining much on the down hills. but weather permitting brighton is a chance of a fast time and i intend to take it

no more pissing about

no excuses now. its time for me to start knuckling down and get serious about training in order to get my self fit for winter. i've two weeks off work nowe and i plan to be out running twice every day apart from saturday sunday and monday due to travel arrangements. i did the wiltshire 10k yesterday mostly as a training run, but ran an exceptionally hilly course in 40:19. it sounds slow but the hills were probably worth 2-3 minutes alone and you didn't make the time up on the down hills. in total there was probably 2.5k worth of climbing, including some sections of the course where the gradient must have been 1 in 3 or 4. this is a bit of a wake up call really though that i need to get my act together. i've already been for an 8 mile run this morning and will do another 4 or 5 tonight. that will be the staple diet through the week and next week as well. of the rowing machine now got too much going on running wise to allow for distractions. i've been trying to find the date for the bourton on the water 10k, but even though it is supposed to be in february or march next year they still haven't advertised it on the bourton road runners website. this is the course that consistently comes up along with the leeds abbey dash when people talk about courses with pb potential and i have missed out on it for tha last two years because i got the information too late and i am determined not to let that happen again