James Thie rang last night to tell me to cheer up after reading the last couple of blogs!... Well as it happens big Neil Speaight is on his way to spend the week down here for a bit of training so I have a lot to be cheerful about especially as James himself might even join in a session Thursday!

I had a solid week of running and was happy to be putting in some miles again after a lot of racing, Sundays run was quite enjoyable if hard. I went on my own and wanted to tick over a bit, not really hard, but not slow. So I went to Margam and parked up and the bottom of the climb, I set of nice a easy and as I entered the park I just cracked it up a little to just out of the 'comfort zone'. It's a heck of climb all the way to the top (over half hour to be exact) so didn't go ridicules, after 20mins I threw the gillet and gloves into the trees knowing id be back here in about an hour or so. At the top I then choose a nice biggish loop around the rolling trails on top of Margam with the odd deer and fox scampering out of the way.

An hour later and having not seen another sole up there and just grinding it out through the tall fern trees I came back to the down hill and picked up my gillet and gloves which was handy as going down quite quick the wind was a bit chilly now. Then the only person I saw that morning coming up the climb was.....Andy Doel, a training partner who is only just getting fitness back so wasn't quite up to the pace so went alone, he wasn't looking to bad actually considering it's a tough old climb up.

After 1 hour 35mins I was back down and then I did 10x1min on a slight climb running straight back down which ending up a good 25minutes and just about finished me off as I really tried to work the minute efforts. A 8 minute jog around the bottom of the park (while people were dressed up as cowboys and Indians pretending to fight) and I was back to the car....It felt so good to get the trainers off as I drove back bare foot and pretty much finished off a litre of water, well its thirsty work this running lark!

Simx