A New Year

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you had a great Christmas and are ready to go again. From my point of view training eased off slightly but I still managed to run 24 days in December clocking up around 150 miles in total.

I did what is now an annual race on St Stephens day in Tinryland, Carlow. This is an annual 4 mile race that I did last year and headed along again at it's close enough to my in-laws. It was a cold, wet & windy morning and it didn't look too appealing when I got there but sure when your there you might as well get on with it. I ran this on effort and didn't look at the watch during the race. It was pretty strung out after the start but I did manage to pass a few people along the way. Obviously with the previous few days you wouldn't be at your fittest but I was happy to finish in 16th place in 28:44 which is around 10 seconds off a PB for the same distance. It felt good to be back racing and hurting again. Really happy with the effort after the few days that went before it, not ideal preparation to say the least.

I am just about finished my latest cycle of training and my long run is now up to 2 hours, with a few strides thrown in for good measure ;-) Most of these have been done over hilly terrain with a few other sadists, making them tougher on the legs. I've gone from running 35 mins a day getting back into things to the point where this weeks mileage will be over 40.

With that in mind Marathon training begins on Sunday and things move back to weekly training plans. Long run on a Sunday and speed session on Wednesday with easy or recovery days in between. Looks to be a challenging run straight away this Sunday, not helped by being in college for the weekend so it will be done on Sunday evening. I'll let you know how it goes.

I just signed up for the Trim 10 mile race on February 1st as well so hopefully make it to that fresh and well.So that's all for now folks. Back to the wind and the rain. The joys of winter running.