Back To Manchester

The BMC 5k in Manchester seems to be the place to be next week as a number of people kept asking "doing Manchester?" well I wasn't but I am now. After thinking about it I thought why not. The travel up is a bit of a pain but the quality field and hopefully some good weather will make up for it, not to mention a half decent run by myself. I will be staying with Steve Sharp before and after the race as he lives quite a bit closer than I do to Manchester plus he has loads of chocolate and biscuits in the house!

The last week of 4 week block went well and started to feel more like I was coping with the miles unlike the first couple of weeks. Another week over 105 miles is not massive but it's a start on the road to increasing up to a consistent 110 mile weeks. Its obviously hard but sometimes in the last few weeks I could of probably done a few more miles here and there but thought it was better to play it safe rather than jump from 90's to 110's, injury is the last thing any runner wants!

I had some company for the whole session on Tuesday from the young man of moment last weekend (running 30.23 at 10k only 20years old). Craig Hopkins wanted to join in with a couple of sessions and he is more than welcome so we did 10x500m in 84seconds with 45second recoveries, It was a little bit breezy but the sunshine helped a bit and as there was two of us it was only really 3 reps each, at the end we did a couple of 200's in 28seconds and felt quite comfortable with the session.

The rest of the week I did some steady runs and a good session Friday night of 4xMile on the road with 90second recovery jog. I ran 2 mile out and then the same 2 back so that it would be fair judge rather than with the wind all the way.

4:38

4:30

4:40

4:38

I felt strong and really enjoyed the session actually, Dad came on the bike and now he has a new bike it is a bit harder to drop him on the hills!

Lastly today on a very sunny day in Porthcawl I did 2hours 10minutes broken up into the following....50mins steady, 1 hour easy, and then 20mins pretty hard. By the end I was done in, Andy joined me for the middle part which made the time go a bit quicker and glad to get it done by lunch time as Porthcawl was starting to get over run by tourists flooding in for a day at the beach.

So all in all a good week, its not quite Switzerland, New York, or Font Romeu like some of the athletes on here but I'm quite happy knocking out the runs around little Porthcawl at the moment!

Simx