Northern 12 Stage Relays

When I sat down a few weeks ago and planned my training with my coach Norman Poole, he said that I could run the Northern relays if I wanted to but I would have to train through them as I was going to have to take a very easy week the following week for the English Half Marathon Champs. This became more applicable after missing a very small amount of work the previous two weeks due to my rib injury.

I ran the first leg.  I expected to be tired and a little down on where I would normally like to be.  The previous weekends 14.3 mile race was still in my legs and I had done two pretty hard sessions and a 24 mile run since then.  I was a little more tired than expected and wasn't able to get close to the leading group at all in the early stages.  I moved up in position throughout and eventually finished in 9th place, 67secs down on Tom Lancashire's fastest leg.  It felt like a useful work out.

A little brief for one of my race reports but there really isn't much more to say.  I had an almost identical experience at last years relay with a similar training week.  I was 20th fastest this year compared to 21st fastest last year.  I was 67secs down on fastest leg this year and 68 last year. 

Everything still feels on schedule despite the minor setback with the ribs.  I am easing down considerably this week to try to run well at Wilmslow, it is the English Champs as mentioned above so should be a good competitive race!

Keep training hard
Cheers
Dave