Two weeks, 6 exams, 3 sessions, 2 races, 1 PB, 1 blood test, 1 bet and countless requests to get a new blog up since the last time I posted, we've got a lot of catching up to do.

What an up and down two weeks its been. A massive high came from finishing the exmas last Friday. Like I said before, leaving 2 terms worth of work to revise the night before an exam was NOT the cleverest idea I've ever had. Fortunately I think they went ok and I did enough to pass and book my place for Year 2 of Maths at Birmingham uni, and if not, I'll just do the retakes in July/August. Your probably wondering why its taken me a week to get the blog up. Well I went back to London to see my family after exams but more importantly, pick up the xbox 360! See I'm staying in Birmingham until the end of my tenancy on July 13th, and now the work is finished I need something to do. I could've of wriiten the blog back there but the PC there is so shit and slow I swear a caveman built it. I got back to Birmingham on Tuesday but only had half an hour at home because I had to shoot off to Steve's. Wednesday I was extremely busy playing the xbox, watching the Champion's League final and getting a blood test sorted, which raises the question, why am I getting a blood test?

Let's track back a bit to the Loughborough International. You may have noticed I ran a horrendous 8:37 and finished very far down. It was such a poor race I'm not even going to bother to write the race report for it. Basically what happened was I got to a mile in 4:30 then just blew up. It was very bad and luckily Maria was there to catch my dummie when I threw it out of the pram, I was not happy. Steve claims I was pissed off because he beat me by 14 seconds, which is not true. If he would've beaten me by a second I would have been pissed off, but he beat me by 14, so clearly something was very wrong with me and I wanted to know what. Spencer Barden had a chat with me and Steve after and said to get a blood test just in case I'm low in iron, and to also take the next week easy. He also said I may be doing my runs too fast and not recovering from my sessions.

So I took the next week easy and decided to use my Garmin watch so I could look at my pace and also heart rate. After a few runs it was clear my runs were too fast. My steady state is around 160 bpm (courtesy of the sports labs at uni) and I decided to keep my runs that week below 150 bpm. At that heart rate I was running 6:30 miling and felt comfortable. Whereas before I was going a lot faster and because I never used to monitor I never knew how fast I was going. But from lasts week information I reckon I was running close to 6 minute miling, even on days after track sessions and hence not recovering. Last week I did runs at 7:30 miling with my heart rate below 140 bpm, see the training log for details. After a week of easy running I feel really fresh and recovered. The lesson I've learnt from last week was to run A LOT slower than what I was doing before because I've got all my endurance from the winter work, it's just a case of running quality sessions, running hard races and recovering in between. In the winter I can comfortably sustain 6 minute miling for a long time but I can't cope with doing that and hard sessions during summer.

As a result I need to exert some sort of control over myself, so I've been doing runs with the other freshers from uni. It's been good running with other people like Wilko, Loz Walker, Jo Townsend, Carl Smith, Alex Tovey, Matt Wilmott, Michael Salter and Ollie Ziff (sorry about the long list, I promised I would mention them). They do their runs at a sensible pace and have good banter on the way round. I live a long way away from them so it is a bit of a hassle running to meet them but I'm only going easy so it dosen't matter. I also managed to jump in and do a session with a few of them on Saturday which went really well.

Anyways, back to the topic of the blood test. I had a chat with the UKA doctor Leon Creaney last Friday and he gave me some good advice about athlete lifestyle and also said he would get the blood test sorted. Then Liz Stone from the HiPAC at Alexander stadium sorted me out with a test on Wedneday at a local hospital. There were problems all over the place at that hospital at the time so had to go back and do it yesterday. They're going to send the results to the doc and he'll then analyse them and tell me if anything's wrong. I'll let you know what happens when I find out.

Even though I was waiting for a blood test until yesterday, I didn't shy away from any hard work. I did a great sesh on Saturday and then tried my hand at an 800m on Tuesday at Stretford. I ran a 5 second PB and got a lot of confidence from the race. Managed to do it off a week of easy running and a track session in flats, I was quite chuffed with myself. It's set me up nicely for an 800m at Sports City on Saturday. I'll put more details on the race report and the training for the last two weeks, but don't hold your breath waiting for them to come up.

A bet was also made involving Harvey Speed and one of his mates at Coventry Godiva. Apparantly this guy said he would beat me at a cross country race next season and if he didn't he would give Harvey £50. I don't know who the guy is but I'll do my best to beat anyone in a Coventry Godiva vest and then the winnings can be split 50/50. 

Sorry about the long blog, but I did say we had a lot of catching up to do.

Always with love,

Goolab xxx