Such fun

The usual Monday run with Milly and his track cronies has now ceased. They get to have September off from training, so I was on my own. I opted to run my ten mile circuit doing four, eleven minute efforts with four minute jogging recoveries. It was difficult at first to capitalise on the mild tailwind  that took me out to to the turn, and then the mild headwind home hindered my return a little and of course by the last effort I was tiring too. However, 62:58 isn't bad going.

After that tough Monday run I didnt do anything at all on Tuesday - I had to go back to work later in the evening  and decided that a long walk with Scamp in the late afternoon would benefit me as much as a short, slow jog.

Back into the tough stuff on Wednesday with a four mile time trial. I did this over the same ground as I do the mile reps so not surprisingly the splits went a similar way with roughly 5:53 pace for the first 3 miles coming down to a final average of 5:49 by the time I had ran the slightly more downhill final mile. Although this was tough, I was only really hurting in that last mile and afterwards I wished I had ran my five mile loop instead. Still, as long as I can run 12 seconds per mile faster (=5:37) and for 55% longer (=6.2miles) at next weeks 10K I will be delighted.

Plucky reported his intention to do an hour at a decent clip on Thursday and I suspect it would have wise to let him get on with that and do my own easy run elsewhere. But not having ran with him for a month or more I joined him anyway and simply let him dictate the pace. It was a funny run, certainly not hard enough to call it a proper hard run, but certainly it was a decent effort - maybe just a tad below the effort of a tempo run. Plucky was full of craic all the way round the 9 mile route which is another sign we werent running as fast as normal as on those occasions he scarcely (is able to) speaks. Average pace was  6:21 per mile for 9.3 hilly miles.

Blencathra  (crapper fells in distance)

I needed little persuasion to take a trip up Blencathra on Friday evening. I was already concerned that doing some 800m reps might be too much to end a reasonably tough week and a Blencathra ascent is not exaclty a walk in the park from any point, but then of course it was just Penrith Stu I was going up with, so even if he was trying hard it wouldnt be much of an effort for my good self. Indeed it turned out a most pleasurable evening - nice'n warm on the climb and then not too cold on the summit as we took some photos, despite only having the flimsiest of T shirts on.

Long run today (Saturday). I didnt want to do anything too arduous so decided to run with Scamp at first then on the road. We did 50 minutes of slow jogging around the park and golf course - possibly only about 8 pace. The  I took Scamp home and ran the Crosby 10 in 73 minutes.


Thats it now for training for a while. Going up Helvellyn tomorrow to watch the Triathlon then one easy jog on Tuesday before the 10k on Wednesday. I'm feeling OK but looking forward to a wee break from the non stop cycle of training. Then I should be ready for another mini season of the November races.

Steve Angus -Tired and looking forward to a wee rest