Greetings,

I'm now in the Algarve with Tom Payn and had the first day of training today. It's nice to be running in shorts and t shirts again! Did 2 x 1 hour and met up with Nick for 45 mins of the 2nd run. He's advised to keep the recovery days easy and not get caught up with battering each other on the steady runs, which is good advice as we have some hard days coming up. Also, I think he was struggling to keep up and that was him trying to save some face, but I'm sure he wouldn't admit that!

As far as our days go - we have a DVD player and we're really being pretty boring! Today was a case of run, watch some South Park, go to supermarket, see Nick at his hotel, run, then I cooked a Thai salmon stir fry and then we watched Brazil. The running is pretty good with some beaches, and quiet roads. There's a 2k XC loop also that has some hills in that will be good for reps. I went a bit OTT on the DVD front and brought out about 150 discs of various series and films, so we're well stocked for the downtime moments, of which there are a lot so that's good! The only other people around are mainly about 70 years old so not much scintiliating company elsewhere...!

I'll try and update fairly regularly. The training will be pretty similar to what I have been doing with just a small lift in volume. It's mainly about recovering well and focussing on each session rather than battering myself. I know I'm in the shape of my life and so I don't need to gamble too much - just focus on the marathon work and keep things ticking over in the meantime.

If you have anything in particular you'd like to know about, ask away!

Ben