Going back to last Tuesday I was in store for possibly the hardest session I've ever done before and it certainly lived up to expectation! Mo and Boniface were doing something different to Nick and I as they have a 10k coming up rather my us two who are running 5k's at the end of the month. Moses is still struggling with a slight calf injury, which is a shame as we've missed him on the runs but the good news is he's back running and building up.

John set us, 4x800, 4x600, 4x800, 4x400, 4x200... yes all for one session. Thanks again John. It was all with pretty tight recoveries, 1minute between reps and 2 between sets so I can safely say it was an absolute killer due to the sheer volume.

I seemed to go pretty well but we both thought the 600's were the hardest part of the session. I really struggled again with my breathing on the last 200 of each rep just like the hills last Saturday. I guess that's just the altitude and it can only get better with time as it didn't feel 'as' bad as Saturday.

After the session I was completely wiped out and I just slept all afternoon once I'd ate everything in the fridge and around 6pm I trotted for 6miles to loosen up followed by a much needed massage on the calf's and gluts.

During the week just to do something on the evenings we have done a "Come Dine With Me" competition between the athletes. I was paired up with Helen, Becky with Mo and Lizzy with Ben the physiologist. I've not actually seen the program so I don't know if we were meant to choose a winner or what not but everyone's food went down well and the entertainment- there were a good few kids games thrown in there!

On Wednesday's run I was absolutely wreaked so I just took it nice and easy running and chopped down to 70 minutes as I felt I was doing more harm than good running so fatigued.  Again going into Thursday I was pretty tired so I decided not to go straight into a tempo run, I just took it easy for most of the run. John had headed off home earlier that morning and his words were "be sensible and think on your feet!" Which I did and just chose to back off for most of the run until the last couple mile which I wound up nicely to about 5:20 pace.

Friday was my easy day; I went down the track and jogged about on the trails, got lost on a golf course and ended up scrambling up a pretty steep hill with Mo while he was warming up for his session. I wish I had a camera with me, as it was quite entertaining! I finished off the run and took some photos of the boys running as Nick was doing a session with him leaving Monday and Mo was doing a tempo with him.

On Saturday I had my 2^nd hill session of the trip and this time Alan chose the hill, not far from the one last week but I little more intense as we were only doing 3 reps. He had us doing 4 minutes; 3 minutes then 2 minutes off good recovery's jogging back down. To start with we did some 30 second efforts, a little quicker than strides and I found this really got us warmed up properly, something I may look at getting john for us to do in the future before long reps. Also after each rep on the plateau we strided out 100m to help get the lactic out the legs and I also found this really helped get rid of that heavy feeling I was getting as I was pushing quite hard. One thing that I noticed different was my breathing, I only realised after but it didn't bother me! Quite strange really but I think I'm finally starting to adapt to the altitude here.

On Sunday Nick and Helen were doing a reduced run so it was either run 15 miles on my own or go with Mo as Boniface chose to rest, as he was kaput as he always says! So off we went and after a nice casual 8:30 first mile it soon quickened up! After 6.5mile I decided to just do an out and back as I wasn't sure my achillies would hold up after the session so I turned and on my way back I caught an Irish lad so I ran with him for a few miles before to got back to the car. I only did 13 in the end as I could feel the calf's starting to ache; I still averaged 6:18 with that slow first mile! No holding back from Mo early on.

On Monday I just took things easy as didn't sleep great again on Sunday night so after my morning run I went back to bed for 4 hours and felt much better for it. In the evening we just jogged and did a few drills before the session in the morning.

Tuesday session was going to be another tough one; I was linking in with Mo and Boniface. They were doing 2 sets of 6x800m with the first set being the quicker of the two with slightly longer recoveries. I was told by John to do 600m of every rep at their pace and I knew they weren't going to be hanging around.

I put my spikes on and off we went taking alternate reps. Boniface felt a problem in his calf so stopped after 2 reps and went to ice it as a precaution so it was left down to Mo and I to crack on. Surprisingly I coped really well with the first set I then changed into my flats and got going with the 2^nd set which actually felt a lot harder because I was just trying to get into a rhythm rather than just blast round.

Mo struggled a little on the 2^nd set so he dropped back to 600s with me after the first two 800s so that meant my recoveries got cut shorter but I still managed to hit my time which was a bonus! You might think how's he struggled with 6x 800s, but he was hitting 2:04s which was just a joy to watch and not so much a joy to hang on to.

I got through the session well though, got every rep in and got a nice easy warm down in. One thing I have learned from the boys is how slow to warm up and warm down. I used to just do 10/15minutes at easy run pace but since being here I've been doing 30 minutes warm up then 30minutes warm down but at 9 or 10 minute miles rather than 7min miles and one thing for sure it makes a difference when you come to run hard. Something I'll certainly be adopting into my sessions and racing now as I feel so much better doing it that way.

Unfortunately no pictures from the session as Storey was still recovering from getting lost on a run! Credit to him, he does more weekly miles than any of us here!!

Tuesday evening was just a nice easy run to loosen up after the session and then I got a much needed massage on the calf's after the torture I put them through wearing spikes earlier in the day. The run was quite entertaining as we met a bunch of Spaniards just setting off as we were so we ran with them. They were soon asking us to go to Andorra with them the next day to buy some 'medical supplies' as you don't get arrested there like you would in France! I'll let you make your own assumptions of what they were implying... we just laughed at them.

Today, Wednesday, was my final day of official training. I've done two weeks back to back of record mileage for me and carried on at the same rate to today. We just did a steady 70 minutes at 8am this morning, then tomorrow and Friday I'll just be jogging 6 miles or so as I'm backing right off before I come home on Saturday.

I've come to the end of my hard 8 weeks of training now and I'm kaput! However I'm sure I will feel 100x better for it in the next few days and I'm actually excited to get racing so I can see what I can run on the track. I'm hoping that all the pb's get rewritten in the next few weeks after all this hard work, and the way things have gone there's no reason why I can do that.

(Left to right: Ben the physiologist, Nick, Boniface, Lizzy, Moses the human xmas tree, Myself, Becky, Mo, Helen and John the Doc)

Next stop for me is a Stretford 1500m on Tuesday night to get the legs turning before the Manchester BMC 5k on the Saturday evening.

Finally I just want to say a huge thank you to UK Athletics for giving me this opportunity to come here and train and I'm sure this summer its going to show in 5000m running across the board how things are starting to pick up for us Brits.

Thanks for taking the time to read, I'll keep you updated on how things go over the next few weeks of training and racing.

Ryan