I am full of sniffles and feeling both lazy and a bit meh about things. You’ll have noticed that I haven’t blogged in a while, but who knows with the run up to year end I may try and get back in the swing of things…no promises mind, it’s not like we’re into the zone of News Year’s resolutions or anything!
What have I been up to?
Well in September I ran the Equinox 24 race, 10km laps in the grounds of Belvoir Castle. I admit that I wasn’t that excited by it, the atmosphere was definitely lacking in comparison to both Spitfire Scramble and Endure24 and the course rapidly got boring. In the end my plan to run as far as I could in 24 hours (and keep running for the full 24 hours) came to an end at around 3am when I was too bored to bother any more. I wasn’t that tired, I wasn’t in that much pain, I just couldn’t be arsed to continue. So with 90km/56 miles in the bag I called it a night, climbed into my sleeping bag and then vacated the camping ground before the mad rush the next day. All in all a positive run and no injuries or major over-heating issues…I classed this as success!
The weekend after Equinox I ran a half marathon at Samphire Hoe for the SVN Battle of Britain event. It was a variation on the normal course, with us heading up through the tunnel and onto the cliff-top, had the weather been better it would have been a lovely run! As it was I had a steady half on my plan and so I stuck to it. I had plenty of time to keep running but am keen not to overdo things, especially the week after a big ultra.
Work-wise things are pretty busy right now, I am leading a new project which means the cat herding has started in earnest. It has also meant I’ve been travelling a bit more than I have in the last 2 years with trips to Amsterdam, Stuttgart and Krakow. It’s all good fun though and I did manage a run along the canal whilst in Amsterdam recently. This has meant I have been a bit slack on the exercise front, but in all honesty I have been pushing quite hard since March so a couple of reduced months has probably done me a bit of good. I am ready to get back to full training though, both with TrainAsONE and the FASTer Way To Fat Loss *, all I need to do is shake this cough and cold off and I can start pushing again.
I definitely think that the combined training I have been doing has seen a big improvement in my health and fitness this year. I am definitely running better and dealing with mid-race heat in a calmer way as well. So I will be continuing to work with both programs in 2018 to help consolidate this year’s progress and get me set up for my race plans in 2018. More on that in a future post I think.
Other than that, I have been keeping busy on the Race Crew front with the Boyf and our friend Ellen. This time last year she asked him if he would join her in her second attempt at Mark Cockbain’s Chained. This time he was doing it in conjunction with the Escape from Meriden (Beyond Marathon) and was allowing people to choose their own running partners. This has meant me doing some training runs chained to the Boyf as practice and then him running the last two legs of Centurion’s Autumn 100 with Ellen for a 50 mile test run to make sure they really wanted to go through with it. Oddly they did!
The training obviously paid off because 35 hours and 41 minutes after leaving Meriden in the centre of England they crossed the imaginary finish line in Southall, London 130 miles away! First of the two chained pairs to make the full race distance and proud survivors of 2 nights and 1 day of running across the country! Not bad going it has to be said. To keep them going I was crewing them along with Lisa, so it was nice to have an official finish for them and it made it all worthwhile.
For now my focus is getting rid of this cold, another work trip and getting back to some training…..let the prep for 2018 commence!
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