Base building and Marathon Training

Haven't blogged for a while have I?

Manchester is only about 14 weeks away now.

I think I left the last blog having had an unfortunate mild hypothermia incident. I survived, but I make damn sure these days that I put proper clothes on as soon as I've finished running. It was a bit frightening. Still, you live and learn.

So it seems my "thing" this year/season is to compete in and complete every available XC. It has been more by accident than any actual plan, but now I am most of the way there it seems silly not to keep it up. XC Relays, leagues, Championships - I'm in. After Nuneaton we had Leek, the last of the North Staffs League. I'm sure I've blogged about this course, safe to say some things never change and despite it not being a particularly cold day, standing watching the kids races showed them to be struggling up the hill crying as usual, with some actually on their hands and knees. I don't know why more clubs from near us don't go in for this league (!!?) Too far to travel I suppose, but these courses are certainly character building. Was pleasantly surprised to be 5th FV35 overall for the 2012 season (it's a small league!) just pipping my rival by coming in a few places ahead at Leek and leapfrogging her to grab the 5th place by a single point. High drama indeed.

Got invited to a few Christmas "do's" in the run up to Xmas, all of which were lovely and I felt full of festive cheer, but I have to say I particularly enjoyed the work one where we went out for a curry with my team at work. All being home based and dispersed over the country these days I do sometimes miss the good old days where we all used to have desks next to each other in Bournville, and I spent some time at the do talking to people who I had literally not spoken to properly for years and some I'd never really spoken to at all - because I get too shy to march up to them and go "aren't you in my team" etc.... It was a lovely evening, and made me realize I miss the lads (I'm the only girl geek in a team of IT consultants) I think for me working from an office of some sort is still the way forward or I'd go a bit bonkers. My current company are selling our team off to another company. No idea what this means apart from the fact I will be TUPE'd so no change in T&Cs and basically they can't get rid of me for at least 2 years so it may all stay the same just a different name on my pay slip.

Change isn't always a bad thing.

Part of my Xmas visiting included going to Newbury to have a trot round the ParkRun there. It was really nice to catch up with the Gobster and talk running for an hour or so, I shall go back and try and have a better run in Feb - I was a bit disappointed to only clock 25 and a bit minutes on what should be a fast course, but the fact is that sometimes we have an off day and there is no rhyme or reason for it. I used to get terribly hung up about this sort of thing, automatically assuming a slower time than before was some sort of step backwards, but of late I've learned to relax a bit about it. There are lots of reasons and factors that have an impact, and mine was the fact that the Thursday before the Saturday the network cabinet that was "the world" at work had blown up (in a virtual sense) and therefore I'd had some busy days / late nights at work. It took me a while to catch up on sleep. Before Xmas myself and J went to do our final ParkRun of the year at Walsall. We both sat in our respective beds that morning listening to the elements outside willing the other to text and say "sod this the rain is too heavy", but neither of us did and we ended up shivering and cold on the start line. This always seems to happen when she and I turn up to a ParkRun together. I don't know if it was just the fact I wanted it to be over, but I managed quite a solid 24.46 and felt OK in the process. 45 odd seconds quicker than the week before on a supposedly slower course, so it just goes to show what a bit of proper sleep can do and I was pleased to be on the right side of 25 mins before Xmas. On the way back in the car with it hammering down cold rain, we saw a posse of little men at the traffic lights standing in flimsy macs with sandwich boards on advertising some shop or other, yup - my job could be worse, sold out or not.

My job could definitely be worse - I've had to work with a few though.

Then it was Christmas. First Christmas in my parents new house, slightly strange but in a good way. Just over a week there, and plenty of opportunity to do lots of good running, despite the weather being completely and utterly foul most of the time. Boxing day the heavens cleared and the sun came out, as it happened I had been invited to a 4 mile time trial run by Cambridge and Coleridge AC by the delightful Richard, I toddled along from my parents as a warm up and warm down and had a cracking run in the middle - one of those surprises - feeling a bit sluggish from some heavy festive eating and disrupted sleep and then I managed to crank out a run at 7.53 pace avg. Nice and good going for me. Sometimes relaxing and forgetting all about any pressure produces a corker of a run like that. During the festivities whilst my parents were watching Downton Abbey / Strictly I decided that I really ought to make the most of this time where I was literally doing nothing. Yeah it's a time for relaxing and stuff but our family is not that big so no real visiting or anything to do and to cut a long story short I decided to revise for my XenServer 6.0 exam (If you don't know what that is don't worry - its something I've been working with for over a year so I should know it by now especially as we've had loads of problems).

Quote from my workmate M "If things didn't go wrong we wouldn't learn anything".

Painful sometimes, but he's right. The way these exams work is you book and pay for them online, go to a special centre where you sit in front of a PC under school like exam conditions (high security I have to take my WATCH off!) and answer 60 or so multiple choice questions. Took and passed it on New Year's Eve - 98% - I got one question wrong. Pass mark was 64%. Not worth the paper it is written on if I can get that sort of score, but hey its something else for my CV.

Exams do not necessarily = intelligence

2013 came in and kicked off with some XC races, the first being the County Championships at Malvern Common. I ran here 4 years ago when the ground was frozen solid, it was a completely different course. This is one of the things that I love about XC - the same course can be completely different. Quite simply the course at Malvern was under about 2 inches of water. It was an enjoyable sloppy mudfest, and despite the conditions I liked it better this time around despite my thumbs down thumbs up thumbs not quite sure showboating to my clubmates :) . No county selection for me, the closest I get to the action is Marshaling at the Intercounties. It was disappointing to see only 48 runners in the ladies race. Seems very low, give it a few years and I might make the Intercounties by default. Next up was the 3rd Birmingham League race at Sandwell Valley, a course I'd not run before. I'd expected this course to be dull because it is with the D1 men and they are all namby pamby track runners so the D1 mens courses are usually loops of flat football pitches to keep them happy. This was actually quite a good course, despite it being bloody cold and snowing on the way there. Plenty of undulation, plenty of slop but it was runnable, and the downhills were great - for me, just the right incline where my confidence level would let me clatter down the hill at high speed. I adopted a new tactic of not going out quite as hard and staying behind the usual suspects who are around me, and tried to move through the field and have a stronger last part of the race. I felt stronger for the initial holding back. The girls I'd been having overtaking competitions with all the way I managed to lose on the last downhill and keep them at bay to the end. 3 more XCs to go, here's hoping that the powers don't wimp out and cancel the Midlands XC championships on Saturday. I do love Stafford Common - haven't been there for... Aaaaaaages. Well at least a month or so!

I still try - and struggle - to understand why people don't want to do XC. I suppose it's a long day if we have to travel, people have families and commitments, and and it is a completely different (and quite hard) type of running. But zooming down that hill at Sandwell Valley just re-enforced the fact that I'm still in love after these 4 years.

So at the moment in terms of Marathon training I'm keeping the speed in the mix and I'm on about 50-55 mpw. I love this mileage. Snow, bring it on I don't care, I've got a pair of trail shoes it's not a bother to me, in fact it's all good strength wise. I'll just slow down and be more careful, if needs be run to time rather than distance if the conditions are bad. I went to see my friend in the Lakes this weekend, managing to flee the Midlands on Thursday night when the snow hit, up to a Lake district that had some snow on the fields but the roads and paths were basically clear. I had some super runs around hers near Staveley / Kendal / out to Windemere and on Saturday I drove up to the first Carlisle ParkRun - regular readers will know every time I go to Barrow I seem to have a kid pass out / fall over in front of me so with it being approximately the same drive I thought I'd go for a change and a quiet life. Carlisle ParkRun is good, but I've been itching to have a proper blast on the tarmac and my heart sank a little bit when I saw the grass of the park marked out like an XC.

No snow to be seen in the frozen north...

It was about 50% grass 50% path - I gave it a good go, having done a 16 miler the day before I was pleased to do 26 and a bit mins on that course, next time I get to Walsall or even possibly Wolverhampton in a few weeks time watch out I'll be giving it some. Grrrr!

Still not decided which 100K to do. If anyone knows of any in Aug/Sept this year please let me know. At the moment Sweden is winning.

Other than that life is dull. Tell me something interesting.

Over and out.