Here's to you Charlie

am: 45 mins easy at a good pace in the underground car park + hill strides
pm: 30 mins easy at the lake
12.5mi

I had a bit of a joke with George yesterday at drills saying 'if Charlie Spedding can do a session in an underground car park then drills is too easy!' Well, I certainly didn't think that I'd be running 50 laps of the car park the following morning! I woke up at 0800 and the weather was far worse than yesterday with a huge blizzard blowing and the snow three times as deep as yesterday. I had some breakfast and stretched a little before going to reception for 0930. Due to the ridiculous weather there were few options and I decided to run in the underground car park. I did so many laps that I stopped counting very early but surprisingly I actually quite enjoyed it. I felt great today and ran pretty quickly as I got into a nice rhythm. My glutes were a little tight early on but eased off very soon into running. I walked a lap afterwards and it was 273 strides and my laps were 55 seconds throughout. So, at a guess I was running just under 6 minute miling which corresponds with the HR average I’d expect. The hill in the car park was ideal for strides and I felt nice and bouncy on them. I thought I may as well use today for meetings so I had a great 1 hour chat with Coach Li - coach to Bernard Lagat amongst others - and found it very helpful. His philosophy is about strength over speed so he loves threshold & tempo which is very similar to what I'm doing at the minute anyway. I had some ravioli and logged my training before going to meet Barry Fudge the physiologist for my mandatory session. I got some good tips on hydration and nutrition but most of it was just common sense. I have booked in for testing at Loughborough in early June which will be interesting to see how I have come on (hopefully!) from my last test in the autumn. Just to round off the day's meetings Lewis and I went for a chat with George next door. It was incredibly interesting to listen to the philosophies of two world renowned coaches in such quick succession and comforting to know that there really are no secrets and that I'm along the right lines in my development. Probably the best bit of advice I took out of today was not to be afraid to take rest and also that consistency is king. I was planning to take a rest in the afternoon but I decided to just go down to the lake for a shuffle and some fun in the snow. It was very thick snow on the trails but the roads/paths were clear enough to run on properly. This was really just a bit of a laugh in the fresh air. I felt a bit tired and heavy legged to begin with but ok after a while. It was not nice to run in because of the blustery snow in our faces and by the looks of the dam we won’t be doing reps on there tomorrow so there may be another change of plan! The conditions were treacherous driving back as after it had abated for a handful of hours the snow poured once again. Once back at the apartment a huge pot of paella was ready to be served which is just the ticket! A great dinner followed by a great film 'The Butterfly Effect' - it is indescribably weird though. I thought it may be interesting to put up a photo from Saturday morning and one from this morning to see just how ridiculous the weather change has been!

The track at the Fort in all it's glory; this is why we came here.

This is not what I wanted to see out of my window this morning; this is why we almost went to Kenya!