Mike Scott said

3 Weeks until London Marathon

Originally I was going to run my interval session 4/11 x4 around the 10mile circuit, followed up the next day with three laps of Talkin. Mentioning my plans to my good pal Mike he suggested that may be too much at this late stage and I should instead do the intervals around the first two laps of Talkin, then jog a third lap very easy to make up the distance.

I have always held Mike opinion in high regard and so didn't hesitate to take his advice. As I arrived at the church in Talkin where I always park I was amazed to see two runners get out of the vehicle in front of me. Chris bunker and Claire Burrell are two people I often see training at gelt. I think they may have been here today due to the motocross meeting which takes over one of the fields on the Gelt circuit. I waited to begin my run until they had so as to allow me to take this photo. I have received constructive criticism suggesting I add pictures to my posts, and although originally and still primarily a training log, I may as well attempt to improve the experience for readers.
Lap one was 42:25. My best time this year. I felt great as the lap was completed so carried right on with lap 2 which took me two seconds less. Thus far I had completed a half marathon including 1200ft ascent inside 85 mins - not bad for a training run , especially considering that 24 minutes, (over 25%) of that time was jogging very easily in the 6 recovery periods between the 6 efforts. I considered running lap 3 at a decent effort in a bid to get a good time for the whole run but decided it made more sense to take it easy as Mike said. 48 minutes was a slow lap 3 but I put no effort in, and am very happy with the run overall. Anybody who trains regularly will know that doing 'running recovery' intervals over a circuit is unlikely to give as fast a result as a steady/hard effort so I'm chuffed with 6:50 pace for 19.5 miles.

I only ate one gel during this run but I didn't get lost at any stage. Afterwards I asked for a free coffee in the village pub. They looked at me funny and asked for one pound thirty!

I hope to include more photos in the future. I don't usually take a camera with me running but always have my iPhone which is OK for impromptu snaps. I have recently purchased a Canon DSLR and am trying to learn all about it's various settings. It's a whole new world to me, ISO, shutter speed, focal length, changeable lenses etc. For now though here's another pic to keep the critics happy.

This is Scamp, one of my two dogs.