At long last a hectic week draws to an end. There were stresses flying all over the place and I sit here very relieved it's all over. Combine this with the good piece of news I got and you are about to embark on a big read. So log off Facebook, unplug the phone from the wall, grab a cup of tea and get comfortable in your favourite reading spot.

We'll start with a topic that made it onto the forums of Eightlane, the unknown date of the National 12 Stage Road Relays. Is it the 17th? The 10th? Is it even in April?? After much investigation and enquiry it was confirmed to be on 17th April. So for those of you who thought it was the 10th, change whatever you had planned for the weekend after and bring it forward one. For the Sharp family and myself, rescheduling what we were down to do was a bit more hassle. See we were meant to be going to Portugal warm weather training from the 14th, as we thought the relays were on the 10th. Even of they were on the 10th, I would've been missing them as I was hoping to go to Canada for the World Student Cross. However, evergreen relay runner Stephen Sharp had the relays firmly pencilled into his calendar. He claims he hasn't missed a road relay for 8 years, including regional and national over both 6 and 12 stage. Some say he knows the exact date of every relay every year, but seldom knows when Christmas is.

Anyways, the thought of him and me missing the relays dosen't help Belgrave's cause for national dominance, so we've rearranged the warm weather training. But the only dates that coincide with when Steve wants to go out are before the relays. This left me in a horrible situation. I had to pick between warm weather training in Portugal or the World Student Cross in Canada. One trip had to go and I had to ask myself which would be more beneficial: a cross country race in April or a pre-track training phase abroad? I picked Portugal. Im gutted I won't get the experience in Canada but Steve said I'll get loads of trips away in the future, and I'm holding him to that. What followed was the stress of getting dates changed. To be fair Maria did a lot of this for us and I had minimal effort to put in, so thank you Mrs Sharp!! This sort of decision making wouldn't have to be done if someone had published their dates correctly in the first place. Now I'm not having a dig at the muppet at UKA who did this, but is it too much to ask to just double check dates that thousands of people rely on? At least now I understand why they tell us at school to check our exam papers before we hand them in.

Moving on, if you keep a close eye on my training log you've probably noticed the lack of mile splits from a few of my runs and certain sessions. This is because my Garmin has decided it wants a time out from working at the moment. This really affected me on my Thursday run as I may possible have done 11 miles worth of work instead of 9. I know it's only two miles difference, but it felt like a lot more! I haven't told Steve this piece of information yet but I'll explain it to him tomorrow and also in the training log at the end of the week.

I also had a very, very tiny, insignificant, minor setback in todays training. Waking up yesterday I felt a bit groggy and like a nasty virus was trying to unleash itself upon me. After an hour or so of being awake I felt fine so I did the 9 mile (possibly 11 mile) run Steve set me. Later on in the evening I felt the same as when I woke up so got a good nights sleep in. Waking up this morning I felt the same, like there was something there but it hadn't quite come out yet. As the day went on I got a bit better but not comfortable enough to go running, especially with the National around the corner. I rang Steve to check if it was ok to have a rest day but he didn't pick up so I took it upon myself to have a day out of the office. Like I said the last thing I want is for something nasty to come out with the National only a week away so I think it was a sensible move. I'd rather miss a run today and wake up tomorrow feeling ready for a session rather than run today and wake up tomorrow bunged up and feeling weak. Plus, I'll have to double-check (take note calendar person) my training logs but I think today could've been the first rest day I've had this year. Again, all this information is something Steve dosen't know yet but I'll fill him in tomorrow. I'll probably get the lecture saying how is he supposed to coach me properly if I don't tell him how I'm doing but in my defence I did try to ring him, but somehow it will still be my fault.

Last bit of stress this week came in the form of a class test, two of them! Unfortunately revising dosen't help training and conversely, training dosen't help revising. I still walked away from both tests a happy man so it's not all bad and as a bonus the running is still going strong. This work has meant no update of the training log but it will be done at the end of this weekend, covering last week and this week.  

I was going to write about the good news, but I think I'll save that until next week. My dad says a good blog is one which leaves the readers wanting more, so hopefully I've left you hanging enough you'll want to come back in the middle of next week to see what this delightful news is along with a pre-race report for Nationals. Please do, last months ratings showed me in third place as most viewed on the website behind Lily and Simon. How the two injured athletes get more views than the running ones I'll never know but it remains one of life's great mysteries.

Til next time,

Goolab xxx    

PS if the people at BUCS read this and are wondering why I haven't returned my form for the World Students yet, paragraphs 2 and 3 explain that little pickle nicely. I understand you would've already had to read those paragraphs before reading this liitle bit, but DOUBLE-CHECK to make sure you didn't miss something the first time.