Coerced back into blogging

So the plan had been to blog just while I was in the picturesque serenity of Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via (to give the full name) but I have been pestered by a handful of people to 'update your bloody blog!' The final straw being my friend and training partner Harry Harper declaring 'a blog is for life, not just for altitude.' I have endeavoured to remember as much of Tuesday & Monday as possible with yesterday and today still fresh in my mind. Thankfully I keep a very detailed training log so it shouldn't take me too long!

pm: Easy accelerating 65 mins on canal trails + strides - 7.12, 6.36, 6.34, 6.30, 6.18, 6.12, 6.10, 6.02, 6.36, and 5.58.
10.5mi

As I thought would be the case I woke up at 0530 this morning feeling like I'd been dragged through hell; and back again. I had some cereal and thought I may as well get the 0747 train again as I was ready for it. The annoying thing about my route to work is that my connecting train departs Leeds at 0759 whereas the train from Woodlesford is due to arrive at 0800. I am hoping that by the law of averages I will be able to catch this train at least once over the next 3 weeks although I'm not holding my breath. As expected I entered Leeds station at 0801 and had 30 mins of kicking my heels at platform 3a. I read Spedding's book to fill the time and I was hugely encouraged to read that he ran a 4.25 mile in between running 28.17 at the Bislett Games in Oslo and winning an international 5000m for England at the Palace. This goes to show we are all human and touch wood I'll run be running low 28 minutes and mid 13 mins soon enough (after all, 4.06 translates to about 4.23 for the mile so why not run QUICKER than Charlie did ...). All joking aside I have folding this page to remind myself that even the best athletes have bad runs and sometimes they can even run inexplicably badly. I sat in on a few more meetings today and felt as if I contributed well to some discussions. My main task of the day was to write a brief introduction for the Yorkshire Cricket Mela that will go on their website. Essentially, the Mela is a 10 day festival climaxing in the Pakistan vs. Australia Test match at Headingley. Fundamentally it is designed to encourage Yorkshire's Pakistani demographic to attend. I'll post a link when it's up there and I'm happy to take all criticism; as long as it's constructive! I managed to negotiate the route home without ever being asked for a ticket and I was able to watch most of England's run chase against Sri Lanka while having some pasta so I wasn't running on fumes this evening. To be totally honest, I very nearly didn’t get out of the door this evening. I felt rubbish and considered just giving myself a rest day to freshen up for Saturday. I eventually just got out and committed to doing an easy half hour. I felt fine once I got going and after the first easy mile I got progressively quicker without thinking about it. This run felt easy but anything quicker than about 6.20 and I had to think about the pace. Because I couldn’t be bothered to start with and saw 70 mins as a long way off I played this game of running every mile quicker than the next which meant picking it up for certain periods to assure this. I had an emergency stop after 8mi and then decided to stretch my legs to finish with. I was getting pretty pissed off today as I have literally never encountered so many midges on a run; I had to angrily knock them out of my way with my hand although I must admit it was entertaining to see other runners doing the same! The dog must have had something wrong today as he was miles back and this was frustrating me no end. So, consequently tonight wasn't the stress-relieving run I was hoping for although it did have me once again thinking about racing a 10k on the road but I tried to forget about it and concentrate on the track season. I felt pretty terrible on strides; almost as if I was tying up. I cut them down to about 8 secs in length and felt a bit better but still poor. I had dinner with my Mum and then watched a bit of TV before surprisingly my sister phoned me. Usually, this means there is a problem or she wants something but tonight we simply had a half hour catch up which was nice. I asked her for a bit of advice on mobile phones as I'm due an upgrade tomorrow. She recommend her new phone the 'HTC Desire' that runs on the Google operating system - I'm open to suggestions from anyone. I watched most of Question Time as ever and was in bed for just past 11pm.