Firstly just wanted to say thanks for all the support I receive on here and elsewhere.  It helps to know that you are being appreciated at least in some quarters!

I shall start with Thursday night's training.  I wrote in my last blog that the snow hadn't really affected the track and had all but gone, until it snowed again on Wednesday night, so woke to a blanket of snow and the old tractor doing its bit helping the cars up the incline outside my home.  I decided that the pavements were too dangerous so thought that I might head to the track and do some grass reps as it least I could gaurantee the footing.  The centre was closed as you would expect and not a soul in sight so headed to the track for the warm up.  I find running in the snow strangely peaceful and although it was quite deep I made the decision to clear the inside lane down the home straight, also the grass was really sodden underneath so thought this might be better.  The only problem was that I didn't have a shovel, instead I used an upturned hurdle and cleared the whole of lane 1.  Must have looked like a right fool!  Still it served the purpose really well and it was pretty good underfoot, so after an extended 30min warm up to be sure I was warm I did another set of turnarounds 3 x 8 x 100 off 15 secs and 3 mins.  Felt really good and running strong.

Anyway, needing some races I headed to Belfast for the Irish Champs on Friday night.  The snow was still falling at Stansted, but to be fair to the crew they rushed us on and we were only delayed by wating for the de-icing truck.  The Irish were great, really hospitable and so I got picked up from the airport and taken straight for dinner, where it was good to bump into the odd old friend and then to the hotel.  I had been looking through the start list and no disrespect to the guys who were racng, the field wasn't as strong as I had hoped, but it was going to be a good personal test against the clock.  I shall write about the actual races in my race report.  Before I sign off on this blog, just wanted to write a little story that I thought was at least funny..... An old training partner of mine was due to be running, so as I was on my own on the Saturday morning I thought I would go look for him.  I had a new phone so his number was not stored, so I went to the hotel desk.  "Is there a Tom Carey staying here?"  "Yes he is in 103," replied the woman at the desk.  So off I went to knock on the door.  "Who is it" came this unfamilar voice.  "Sp8y" I said.  "Who!" "Err Neil Speaight, is Tom Carey there?"  "Yes he's in the shower" (this is all behind closed doors!)  "Err well can I come in and wait"  At this point the guy opened the door and said no problems, so I did my introductions and went in to wait.  So you can imagine how uncomfortable it was when this guy came out of the shower, and I didn't know him from adam!!  Yes he was a Tom Carey, but not the one I knew!  Hilarious, so I made a quick exit.  Funnily enough when I did find the Tom Carey I knew he was staying in the room right next door to the 'other' one!

As I said the info on the races shall be in the race report section

Cheers for reading

Sp8y