Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you all had a great time and didn't eat too much!

On Tuesday I raced the Ribble Vally 10km up at Clitheroe. It's always a great event and this year was no exception. The organisers do a fantastic job of putting on a great race and getting some of the best lads in the country together. The race itself went really well for me on a personal level. After a slowish first half I decided to push on at 4k. This wasn't part of the plan but I'd rather see the pace pushed on for a fast time were possible and I felt good so why not. I was quickly joined by Ricky Stevenson and Alastair Brownlee and we were all working well together. Im not sure where but we started to move away from from the rest of the field around 5/6k I think. I kept on trying to push on but couldn't shake them off. I know how strong Alistair is from his triathlon so I knew it was going to be a very good race. Eventually I managed to move away from him in the last 400m to get the win. I didn't take any splits during the race apart from one of the coaches from the club Tony Clarke who said we were on 23:35 at 8k. I was quite surprised when I started climbing up the last hill to the finish to hear Dave shouting at me to push on for sub 29. I couldn't quite make sub 29 but I was still pleased with my efforts on a tough course with a slowish start. One of the performances of the day for me was David Devine who I've been training with this winter. He's an 800m runner really, well used to be but he ran 30:57 for his first ever 10k in RV which I think is inside the world record for his disability category. Great stuff from a great lad and well deserved. Fingers crossed he can claim gold in London next year over 800m and 1500m.

Anyway enough of RV onto the big one now... Last night we headed to New Brighton for the annual Liverpool Harriers Laser Quest Championships.  Unfortunately for us Jordan Donnelly of Wirral AC took the honours in both games. Something tells me he's been secret training in Germany. Chantal scored the lowest score in history of -15, not sure how she managed that unless she was shooting herself as the highest score of the day was over 1k. It was a great night though and always nice to do something different. We also played 10 pin bowling but I won't go into much detail with that. We modified it into a bit of a work out as well with each gutter shot earning you 5-press ups and a double gutter shot earned you 20press ups. Gundo was the only one who managed this, although he didn't have the 50 press ups for losing, let's just say I won't be giving up running any time soon. Jay Spearing on the other hand should seriously think about taking bowling up. He was in the lane next to us and certainly knew how to bowl!