Love is in the air and the hills are alive

I didn't make it to the Cheltenham XC, so my continuous XC race streak for this season is broken. Boo.

What on earth would make me miss this I hear you ask? Well, I went to assist with some pedigree dog breeding, which basically involves:

• Getting up hideously early for a Saturday morning meeting my friend and her er.. bitch (innit) at a motorway services
• Lots of caffienated drinks (for us)
• Lots of dog treats (not for us)
• Driving to Huntingdon racecourse through the bucketing sleet and snow to meet up with "the stud" (who had travelled from Norfolk especially)
• Rampant outdoor humping (not for us)

At this point I suppose I should explain that my friend lives in Kendal - Cumbria - and this was a long drive in a day for her, so I rode passenger on my bit of the M6/A14. This was partly for extra company and undoubtedly for my navigational skills (in this modern age rather than the ability to hold a map the right way up it simply means I have a TomTom). I don't have the lifestyle to have pets, but I adore my friend and her dogs, so she and they are one of a small subset of people / four legged friends I would drop everything for. We got to Huntingdon racecourse in plenty of time and another car drew up in the parking area.... *gasp* It was the Stud and his lady owner - he looked just as handsome in real life as his photos. Phwoar!

*swoon* :)

The owner of the stud informed us that he didn't usually like blue bitches such as my friend owns (that's a term for their colour not personality) preferring the orange ladies (e.g. blond - bloody superficial men) so we were a bit worried he wouldn't be up to the job; but like a true man as soon as we got our lovely girl out of the car he went ballistic and started panting so the signs were good. In true ladylike style she sensed this over keen vibe and seemed petrified - I've heard of playing hard to get but this was something else. We walked them along a little bit by the privacy of a particularly cosy looking hedge, and just as they were about to get better acquainted, a random man appeared out of nowhere with a car and launched about 8 Springer Spaniels out of it muttering something about "I'll walk my dogs where I like" - what?! we never said anything!. The most deserted spot in Cambridgeshire and we get the cast of a Disney movie running past in a comedy style-ee.

Things got a bit more relaxed once the stampede had run off over the horizon, and the magic happened (with me feeling like I should be averting my eyes). I've seen plenty of nature documentaries but I didn't quite realise that pet dogs locked together for that long, hence I played the important role of being lookout for "grumpy springer man" whilst my friend and the studs owner held the dogs in position. These dogs (English Setters) are not massively intelligent when it comes to furthering their breed and need a bit of extra help. Hopefully in mid April there will be the pitter patter of lots of tiny puppy feet and I can make everyone vomit with sickeningly cute photos on Facebook and the like.


My start on that Saturday was too early for even a parkrun, so after I got home I ran to the parkrun course near me and back home in a progressive style. I'd been feeling a bit tired all week, but what happened that evening was weird. Got back, had a shower and thought "I'll just have a nap for an hour" at 5pm. Woke up at 9.30pm thinking "Must eat for tomorrows 20 miler". Managed to shovel down some "Breakfast Biscuits" to fill me up and then back to bed and asleep again by 10pm. Up at 8am on the Sunday. So that's about 14.5 hours sleep. It worries me slightly, I think and hope it was just the combination of some decent mileage weeks, some late nights and early starts. I did feel better for the sleep-a-thon though.


Long runs have been going well, it might seem early but for me the more 20 milers in a marathon campaign the better and I am well in to them already. The Sunday after my half day sleep I was raring to go, despite it being chucking it down and a howling gale - I messed up my route planning (probably too busy daydreaming / listening to the radio but in a long distance runner I think sometimes this detachment is a good thing) and ended up clocking 22 miles. C'est la vie, it was at an easy pace and I don't think the extra running did me any harm, I'd have done more harm if I'd walked back to the car or phoned someone (who I would dare to disturb from the Coronation Street Omnibus I don't really know) to be rescued and spent half an hour getting cold.

This weekend just gone, I visited the Newbury Parkrun again, it was lovely to see so many friends. Not racing this week I ran with Jayne, and we went for an easy start, inadvertently doing quite a good progressive run. And the cake. Well, the cake...

£10 model's own to give a sense of scale

I did share it though. It also looked like it was made with wholemeal flour, so with the addition of some dried fruit that constitutes "health food" right? And here's a nice thing, it appears an actual running club has been born out of the ParkRun community at Newbury. Seems like quite a cool thing to have happened.

Landed at my Mum and Dads Saturday after Newbury. They have purchased a tank and some tropical fish. An afternoon of "ooh the fish has swum in to the log" "now he's swum out of the log". Love them :-)

Last Sunday was the Stamford Valentines 30K, one of my favourite races, and in longer distance terms one of the ones that I've done the most times, I think this is the fourth outing here for me. First things first, despite doing parkruns and things, it seems like about a year since I've actually had to do any marathon paced running. Might not be true but it's just how it feels. Stamford is a hilly course, and despite having done some far more tricky routes I felt really nervous about my mission. Why?? I think it was fear of not being able to do it, fear of blowing up, fear of putting the effort in expecting say 9.00mm and getting 10.00mm but I've learnt if you don't try you'll never know. So I promise myself I will always try - always when it comes to running, I try to apply this rule to general life with mixed success.

I lurked at about 10.15 easy pace for the first 6 miles, and felt comfortable. It was an absolutely beautiful day - all of the other times I've run there it has been grey and freezing with patches of snow on the ground, it's amazing how the conditions can change your perception of the same route. It felt good to be alive. So, the six mile mark approached, and ding ding, I started off on the MP effort (my MP is about 9.00mm) and realise I'm doing 8.00mm down a hill. Gasps of shock from the people who I was behind up to this point as I started running past them like a lunatic. I soon calmed it down, but it felt like every time I got in to something approaching a rhythm a large incline would appear and slow me down, or a large downhill where I would end up going faster for the same effort and wonder if that was "too fast".

I caught up Becca just before 8 miles, and said something like  "I feel like I'm finding this too hard", I think it was just nerves and over enthusiasm and I had to accept that on this course mile splits are going to be up and down; once I had got my head around that (and focused on not losing Becca's red and yellow shirt bobbing along in the distance) I felt a lot better. The good thing about starting slow is that if you do put any faster work in then it becomes an overtaking-fest, which I'm sorry to say is good for my state of mind but probably not those I'm overtaking. Sorry everyone.

The other thing I have to to remember is that this was a training run. My MP efforts were all in the right zone so still decent splits according to the amount of uphill/downhill on a given mile. The point of training is that it is a building block and come the marathon day it all comes together - so for the first attempt at MP in a while I think that was a pretty good session. When I got to 15.5 miles I wound down, and then very ironically found it hard to come down off of the marathon pace. I stopped for a few seconds at the 5K from home water station to get my water bottle completely refilled, in relative terms it was quite warm at Stamford and I don't think I needed the thermal top. As I approached the school I couldn't help but speed up a little to make sure I didn't have any embarrassing being overtaken moments at the finish.... 2.57. In itself not a bad time, good when you consider 9 miles of it were run very slowly.

So I grabbed my goodie bag, headed quickly to the car, took my number off etc and ran 0.6 miles back up the course and back home as a warm down. Always, despite not having a number on, some twit will be shouting "you're running the wrong way" *sigh* I warm down along the course to be encouraging to people coming in and all I get is smart-arses. The extra mile or so made it up to 20, job done and I felt fine.

I must admit when I saw the club speed work schedule this week I groaned at the thought of a hill session, but maybe Stamford has acclimatised me or something because on our 9 hill loops last night I felt like I was flying. My general form moving along and overtaking power showed I probably was flying - good news.

Another set? Don't mind if I do. Raargh!

I think I forgot to say in the last blog, I've entered the 100K in Stockholm (early August) I'm quite excited, it looks like it will be a nice course and a nice break either side. I'll be happy to get through it, and having watched the 'team USA' Spartathlon video (made by a chap with very white teeth who runs insane distances and eats just fruit and veg(!)) I think if I managed to go under the qualifying time I would have to give entry some consideration, - it would be one of those amazing and life changing experiences. But all that is a bit too scary to think about at the moment so I won't. My head is firmly in the sand on that one.

National XC on Saturday in Sunderland, looking forward to it, last outing of the XC season and it looks like it's going to be proper cold and miserable, in the words of Mrs Doyle I want a good miserable time!

January....

January....

Ok, so if we're all waving our mileage todgers around chaps, 227 miles in Jan. Mine is probably bigger than yours. Not a target, just doin' what I need to do.

I think anyone did well to run in the snow. Thank goodness for Gore-Tex Innov8s. The Tuesday after "snowmageddon weekend" was lovely underfoot, and that whole week I managed some quite decent med/long runs by choosing mixed road / off road routes with a majority of un-trodden snow and sensible pavements. I know there is 100 miles in between, but the difference between Wolverhampton and Bristol was amazing - drove to work in Bristol on the Wednesday to find NO SNOW to be seen, that didn't stop everyone else from Birmingham phoning in saying they were unable to get the car off the drive *sigh*. I'm either foolish or just hardened to the elements.

By Friday the Wolverhampton "winter wonderland" had turned in to a skating rink, so sensible head on I ran down the road to a small park and ran laps round and round like a hamster on a (snowy) wheel to get my run in. Where there is a will there is a way. That same evening I went to the Burns night celebration at the running / cricket club - I've decided to get out more. The forecast for that Friday was 4" of snow, but I decided to go anyway. Not been to a Burns night before, but it seemed to involve people dressed in full Scottish gear, reading out some poems, piping in the haggis with bagpipes, a nice haggis meal (I'll eat pretty much anything I'm afraid) and after dinner whisky sampling (I hate whisky and was driving anyway). The highlight of the evening had to be the Scottish dancing. It started, and the caller (man who tells everyone what to do) was asking for victims for the first dance; I got persuaded by the lovely Ged to go up and have a go. My thinking was that a) It would get the humiliation over with early  and b) The first dances would be "easy". It was great fun galloping, twirling and spinning around and due to all of our collective dancing incompetencies I haven't laughed so much in a long time. The firework night at the cricket club was excellent too, I shall be going to more of their things I think.

On the Saturday a small contingent of us went to the Midlands are XC at Stafford Common, you may recall a picture from a previous blog where I have a leg with one brown sock on from misjudging "the ditch". We tend to run Stafford common at least twice a season, if unlucky 3 times, I understand why people don't want to do it.. again... but it was a different course! On a dry day I've run 8.20 pace there, however towards the end of last year as the photo showed it was very boggy and slower going. Well 2013 brought a new element: snow! It had dumped a load more on the Friday night (in fact a few miles up the road in Manchester people had been stranded in their cars on the M6). The main roads were clear, and I was so pleased this was still on, as they cancelled the Southerns at the beginning of that week. Stafford Harriers did well in hosting the event. It was odd running in the type of slushy snow they had there, if I didn't know better I would say the insides of my shoes were getting wet and then the water was starting to freeze inside my shoes. We heard a worrying conversation before the start which involved a boy in a junior race losing both shoes, running the rest of the race in his socks and then being carted to the medical tent because his socks had frozen to his feet!

Snow joke

Unfortunately they had cut the course and "the ditch" was left out. Probably just as well I may have lost a leg to frostbite.

So that weekend I got up to an 18 mile Long Run, and this past week has been quite a big one too. Due to it being the club's annual 10 mile race I had to do a bit of chopping and changing of long run day, I got all my work done early on Friday and headed out on the later part of Friday afternoon for the first 20 miler of the campaign. I ran to West park to have a look in preparation for the Saturday ParkRun, and then round to the Aldersley (atheletics) stadium, and found myself overly excited by the fact they have re-surfaced the canal between Aldersley and Tettenhall. *sigh* I guess there are worse things to get excited about. I usally start my long runs with the club and carry on, or do a 20 mile race as an LSR, so I was a bit worried how I would fare doing the whole thing on my own (more mentally than physically) but choosing the route, constantly checking my pace, breaking it down in to chunks and having a Sainsburys on the route to stop for extra water gave me small things to focus on and it went really quickly. 

So long run complete I wanted to go to the first Wolves ParkRun on Saturday. I had thought about enquiring about starting one a while back, but perhaps somewhat selfishly decided it would take more commitment than I had (or more precisely was ABLE to give) so put it to the back of my mind. I was pleased to see it was starting, and now it is here I want to help out / run as much as I can and I am over the moon that it is a perfect WU / WD distance from where I live. My legs were fine after the Friday run, and I didn't have a problem getting out of bed and warming up on a glorious morning, jogging along looking a the blue sky and waving at some of the folks from the club going past me in the car down the Penn road. It was nice to see so many familiar faces there, both from afar and local. My strategy if you can call it that was to forget about having done a 20 not much more than 12h before and run it blind but to give it 5K effort for a long as I could. The Wolves course is relatively flat, good underfoot (a few icy patches) and 3 laps starting and finishing near the bandstand / tea rooms. I felt quite good, and in the 2nd and 3rd laps was picking people off. As I got close to the finish I was wondering what time I had done, I thought maybe 25:30. I looked at my watch and with not that far to go I was on the low 24:xx so I picked it up and the last .15 miles was doing 7.00mm with a strange expression on my face (I think it's called "effort"). I couldn't quite believe I'd clocked 24:49. Cool! I also feel at these events it is important to support the local cafe that has bothered to open so went and had a bit of cake and some diet coke and a nice chat with some of the other runners before heading off 2 miles home. I can see myself going to this more and more.

Get that camera OUT OF MY FACE!! :)

Today was Stourbridge Running Clubs annual 10 mile race the Stourbridge Stagger. This is hard off road race, and it was nice to see the club pull together and make another successful event. I'm a bit tired from an early start - spent between 07.30-09.30 putting stakes in the ground to have them moved 3cm along by Roy :-p, then directing folks in to the car park then recording the numbers at the finish. Respect to all the runners and very proud of the club folk once again.

So in Feb, if I make the Cheltenham XC and the National I will have done EVERY XC race that the club has entered. That would be good going. I've also got some 18/20 mile races in the mix, not that I intend to race them but it makes for different scenery and I can match it up with visiting friends / parents. Looking forward to Feb!