November 2011

[Sweder]

After P2P and a brace of recovery runs with MLCman on Hobart's astonishingly beautiful Seven Mile Beach I returned to my native Lewes hills. Yesterday's morning session was wonderful. My, how easy the slick green slopes seemed after that gruelling mountain! I fair flew up to BlackCap, dogs in tow, feet light and legs remarkably fresh.

I'm traveling again next week (Dubai for the World Diabetes Congress) so my plans to start on the long road to Almeria and Brighton are on hold 'till mid December. Tomorrow would be Moyleman's birthday. I'll be joining Ladyrunner and Moylebird for their 100th ParkRuns (Hove Park, Saturday 9am), a lovely piece of synchronicity to be toasted with coffee and cake. Chances to run in Dubai will be limited to ugly sweat-ups on the hotel treadmill.

After that I plan to hack out some form of training schedule to include flat road running, perhaps even seafront plodding. Brighton has a lot of long, flat sections and I need to be well prepared for the mental challenge. Offroad hill work is great for legs and lungs but is by its nature entertaining and distracting, all those ankle-breaking rabbit scrapes and cheeky cambers to negoitiate. I need to train my brain to deal with twenty to thirty minutes of heads down, no nonsense mindless boogie. I'll add on some fartlek, speed work (at ParkRun), occasional midweek sessions chasing the horribly fit Ladyrunner through the hills and the odd barefoot outing (to work on posture and gait). Hopefully a nice varied diet to deliver all round race fitness and a bit of weight loss.

Speaking of diets I've decided not to jump on the waggon, at least not yet. I'm happy to moderate my beer intake but with the festive season looming a total ban would be dumb. January offers a better opportunity for sobriety. Track du jour: Killing Yourself To Live, Black Sabbath. Great for hill running.