an apology

first things first i have heard about johns mate sarah who has been experiencing problems with the postal system recently due to the recent industrial action that has been taking place in bristol london peterborough leeds and scotland and will be going national next week. i heard that some thing she sent in the post got delayed in the back log and was consequently late. i can only apologise unreservedly for any inconvenience it caused her or to any of you who have experienced problems with royal mail recently. i'm sure you don't want me going on though too much about our reasons for going out on strike (staff being bullied by managers, longer working days, later hours in return for less pay, job cuts) and a refusal by managers to compromise or negotiate meaningfully on any thing has left us with very little alternative. NO POSTMAN/WOMAN OR UNION OFFICIAL WANTS TO BE IN THE POSITION OF GOING OUT ON STRIKE AS WE LOSE A LOT OF MONEY

enough of that though recently i have been runnig a lot of miles including a 16 mile long run on last saturday and a 10 k tempo run tonight which i completed in 38:59, my best time for that distance since my come back began. conditions tonight were near perfect with a slight cooling drizzle, and next to no breeze. for those of you that know portishead the course was this. start by the toilets at the lake ground, down esplanade road up lake road, rodmoor road, down beach road west and back to where i started. i repeated this 3 times followed by 3 shorter circuits of esplanade road and the full length of lake road, before i finally did a final length of esplanade, before finishing by the open air pool. i made a relatively conservative start for about 10 minutes before i really got in to my stride and attacked the run. there have been times when i've been running when i can really feel the testosterone flowing, like floyd landis must have done on THAT tour stage a few years ago, when no matter how hard you push yourself, no matter how hard your breathing, you just don't feel yourself tiring and thats what i felt like tonight. contrast that with last night when i went on a steady 9 miler around clapton in gordano and my legs were so heavy due to the unusually heavy mileage i've been doing, that i really felt like i was struggling to lift them for the whole run.

aerobically i feel fitter now than i've been for a long long time, backed up by the fact that i pb'd at the burnham half marathon. unfortunately anaerobically i can't say the same thing though. it is pretty much the story of my running career though, that its my struggle with any form of training that involves heavy lactate production, that i've really struggled with and with me soon going to be the wrong side of thirty its hard to see it changing ever now. part of that is due to the fact that i came to running competitively relatively late in life and part is due to my physical make up ie lack of fast twitch muscle fibres and the marathon is unlikely to help it but i feel confident i can get my self in to some thing close to pb shape by the time i start my 18 week plan for the marathon. we'll see.