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!