Viva Englandia

Mount Famine 2010

Well 7 months without a race and then I decide to do 3 in 3 days as part of the Hayfield May Queen festival - so far its 2 down one to go and both have resulted in PB times which feels bizarre as I certainly don't feel in shape.

Perhaps the future is drink more eat more, run less !

Viva Englandia

This story is not really running related although most of the band are athletes and two of them just recently completed marathons in amazing times - Tony in fact is now in the Guinness book of records for his run at last week London Marathon.



Anyway back to the chase - White Van Man have cut what we feel will be this years World Cup song - there have been many memorable and not so memorable ones over the years but this one is the best I have heard so far in 2010 (I have listened to 12 altogether and would you believe there are 110 England ones out there)

 So now lets feast you ears and eyes on this one





And if you like it then let the lads know

I like Viva Englandia !!!

Lillehammer or bust - bust !

Well after a many weeks of running through snow and ice the better weather came and long runs could once again resume properly - however within two weeks of this happening I was 'posted' to go and work in Sweden and Norway where the snow is deeper, colder and stays much later in the year than the UK.


Although Lillehammer is a beautiful place its not a place you can go do a long run out on the streets in two foot of snow - so reluctantly I have decided that there will be no London Marathon for me this year (first one I will miss in 5 years).


Its a weight off my shoulders to be honest and I can concentrate on being a human again for a few weeks - only a few weeks though !


I will be gutted on the day but knowing that many friends and fellow athletes will be giving it their best shot will help me through it !!


I have skied for the first time ever though and although my style was somewhat unorthodox (mostly on my arse) its something that I enjoyed and will try again very soon - in fact hopefully next week in Norway again.

Time to leave the wilderness

After weeks and weeks of just running with no real aim or goals and with the nights starting to get shorter now is the time to reset (or even make) goals for the next few months.

Fitness levels are OK, averaging 50-60 miles has taken care of that - and endurance is also OK, a twenty miler on Sunday, a 18.5 miler the week before and teh ability to throw out 13-14-15 mile runs means I am doing OK.

So what about races and targets ?

I started wearing my Garmin again last week for the first time in 4-5 months, sometimes gadgets, watches, herat rate monitors can take away from the running you are doing - you know when you are running well without a watch to tell you and you know when you are not running well also.

The main plus of a Garmin is its HRM facility to ebale you to run in the zone you need to run in - Sunday 20 mile run for example left me please that I averaged at 139 bpm  (OK fastest mile was 7:30 and the uphill mile was 9:30+ so it was never going to be a speed session)

Anyway the one race I am entered for is VLM - which leaves me with a 'do I go for it' and have one effort at sub 3:00 or do I enjoy it and settle for 3:15-3:20 - still haven't decided.

Happy New Year

Well the last month feels like its been a month of trying to run normally through the snow and ice.

What started out as a few fun long runs over Christmas in the snow has now become tedious to say the least - although teh regular snow ball fights have been fun.

Mileage is hovering around 50-60 per week with the odd blip like last week where I pushed out 92 miles in 8 days - long runs are taking longer due to the snow and I still haven't decided if I will run in this years London marathon.

Out of the group I run in there is a lot of 'fed up of racing' type feelings going around, with many of us talking about Ultras and 'unusual' races - loss of focus is something I will need to deal with.

We had a great weekend last weekend to celebrate mine and Tonys 45th birthdays - it was a lads 'Olympics' with events centred around drinking and eating and causing self harm !!

New Years resolution is to either keep this blog more updated or can it totally - we will see !