These last 8 days have been somewhat painful for me, not because I am injured, I just feel absolutely wreaked all the time! A combination of racing and training and really taken its tole on me this last week. It started with the cross race in Edinburgh which, as any long fast cross country would, it wiped me out or 24 hours. I crawled round my Sunday run and managed 55mins coving about 5.5 miles!

This didn't bother me though, I will often reduce my Sunday run depending on how I feel when I wake up and when you're stuggling to run quicker than a 7:40 mile you know it's one of those days. I felt much better on the Monday and carried on as normal with a couple runs and circuits. The Tuesday morning I had a session of 5x 3mins then 1min off 1minutes throughout, again a tough session with the race still in my legs so I just relaxed and ran to my tempo heart rates and felt ok. The next day is where it all started to hurt me!

I did my long run in the snow with the group and then had my first weights session of the season straight after. I forgot how tough these sessions were! The weights really took it out of me so I went into Thursday a little cautious and did my tempo later in the day as I had an exam early afternoon and didn't fancy doing it before that. It was very slippy under foot so I opted for spikes which my calfs didn't agree with but I'd prefer tight calfs over a fall any day!

I got my tempo in, 10mins at 6's, 10mins at 5:30's, 10mins at 5's around the outwoods and headed home pretty tired at that point. Friday I was wreaked, the doms kicked in after the weights and Friday morning run was a long hour! I just got it done and prepared for Saturday's hill session. It was the last long hill session in this block of training. I knew on the first rep I was going to struggle and my legs were just unwilling to turn! I stayed in my heavy shoes anyway as it was still a little icey after the big thaw and my flats have next to no grip on them. 3 reps of the 5 done my legs packed in on me and I ended up just running at tempo pace for the last two instead of killing myself.

Definately the sensible choice I think as again on Sunday I felt like I was struggling to run any quicker than 7:30s again. This week I didn't have a race in my legs so I got my full 90minutes in, then today my legs were STILL feeling tired which is frustrating me but at the end of the day they're tired for a reason.

I only ran a couple of miles this morning instead of my usual 40minutes and i'm not going to run tonight just to give my body a break from running for 36 hours. I did my hurdle drills and foot drills and they seemed to have loosened off my legs a fair amount. Later tonight i'll go along to circuits and then do an easy 20minutes in the morning before my session tomorrow night. My group is mixing in with George Gandys lot in the evening as they're doing the same session so it makes sense for us to join in with them guys and girls which should be good as I haven't trained with them for a while.

I'm hoping i've seen the back of my tired legs and I think i've made the right decisions with easing back Saturday and cutting down my runs this morning. Fingers crossed I can crack on with some quality training now as i'm looking forward to finally getting on the track as I haven't trained on it for ages!

Thanks for reading,

Ryan