it's been a while..

It really has been a while since I've blogged.
I seem to have been unable to sit down long enough and concentrate to write anything. Even as we speak I'm twitching and thinking of other things I should be doing. Given that I'm unlikely to actually do them if I get up from this laptop I'm going to force myself to stay seated and produce something publishable..

Thankfully, I'm still running. I've been following my marathon training plan fairly diligently - I've had to miss the occasional day here and there but I've been rigorous about the long runs, the pace runs and the semi-long runs - only missing the occasional cross training session or short run. Not great but acceptable. In week 7 now and feeling good. Particularly as I've just run a half-marathon this past Sunday and set a PB of 1:58:30 (beating my previous PB of 2:05:49 which I set 2 years ago in Leeds). I ran it with a friend from my running club, Sally. Sally is relatively new to running but a born talent. A few weeks ago she asked me if I'd join her for a 10miler as she'd never run more than 6 miles and was nervous about heading into double digits. So one rainy Saturday morning she and I trudged along a dual carriageway and ran over 10 miles in 1:45 (and that included two toilet breaks). I was thrilled with our time and her pace - she is naturally at least a 9 minute miler which is a step up for me.. Given that she seemed to have no trouble with our run, I encouraged her to run a half with me. So Sunday
found us on a cold and windy airfield south of Lincoln (at RAF Cranwell) for the Sleaford half. It was a well organised race - an amazing amount of marshalls for such a small (sub 500) field. Mostly on quietish roads, it also included a challenging and muddy bit of off-road running which slowed us down but also provided a bit of variation. Sally paced me well - we fell into a hard but manageable pace of around the 9 minute mile and stayed pretty consistent along the way. During the last mile, I could feel that we were going to beat the 2 hour mark if we pushed it so I broke away from her and forced myself to the finish line - I needn't have done this because Sal was right behind me at 1:58:51. An amazing achievement for her in so many ways - given that she had never run more than 6 miles 2 weeks ago it is incredible. She came third in her age group as well - a very impressive performance. It was a new and very enjoyable experience to be running the race with someone - up until now I've always trained on my own and run the races on my own but I am enjoying the company. Particularly when it spurs me on to work that bit harder!


So in the next few weeks I'm going to concentrate on just being consistent with my training plan and not missing any more days. My long run is 14M this week which should be do-able, strangely enough I'm quite looking forward to the prospect of trudging through the rain, listening to my iPod. So keep checking in - I've now broken my bad habit of February and hope to be able to do better in March.