It was a red carpet weekend for me, on Sunday I was very busy fitting in a 2-hour run, watching Liverpool beat Chelsea and also attending two presentations one at West Kirby Leisure Centre and one at the West Derby Conservatory Club! (Doesn't get much better than that!)

The first of which was the Hoylake Swimming Club Presentation followed by the Liverpool Harriers Club Presentation. Although not a serious swimmer I do really enjoy my swimming sessions even though Dave's not massively keen on me swimming as much as I do.  I have been a member of the club since I was 8 so I'm not too far of life membership status!  On Sunday I was very privileged to be asked to be the 'star' presenter at the presentation. I think they had failed to get their 10 previous preferences.   Anyway this is something very new to me, normally I'm on the receiving end at presentations but I was very proud to hand the awards out.  It's a fantastic little club as shown by the amount of awards given out and they are so committed and driven to ensuring all swimmers meet their potentials and get the most out of their sessions so I was only too happy to help out.  I also received an award for life service to the club and helping out with coaching on Wednesday evenings so I was very surprised and honored to receive this award.  In the evening I headed over the water to the Harriers presentation and was fortunate to receive the award for distance athlete of the year.  I think I've won this award 5 years on the run now so it's another award I was very proud to receive.  Hopefully I can continue performing for the club in the future and help win some medals. 

There was an article in AW last week about club servants, I'll be honest I haven't actually seen the list but have heard a lot about it, particularly from John McCole winging about not making the top 100.  It got me thinking last night about all the club servants behind the scenes that maybe haven't made the list.  So much hard work is put in on a voluntary basis both at the Harriers and Hoylake and a lot of it does go un-noticed by some.  Clubs couldn't run without Chairman's, secretaries, treasurers, officials, coaches and many more.  The amount of hard work and effort they put in is amazing and sports wouldn't exist without them.  Often as were leaving training on a Thursday night members of the committee are sticking round for a meeting upstairs and there normally the same people that are having Merseyside Athletics meetings in the clubhouse after Sophie's circuit classes on a Monday.  On a personal level Dave often puts his coaching commitments before his marriage but that's just him all over.  He works so hard planning sessions and standing at the side of the track several nights of the week.  The same goes at the swimming club were the head coach Anne gives up so much of her time coaching every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night not to mention her coaching job throughout the week.  So if any of you are reading this, thanks very much for all your support and effort over the years! 

Now I am officially unemployed I have made the most of my free time and cranked the training up.  I managed 100miles last week, following 95 the week before.  I am looking forward to continuing this block of hard training up to Christmas before backing off for the Ribble Valley 10k and getting onto the indoors in the new year.  I am hoping a good solid block of consistent training will set me up nicely for next year.

I'd just like to mention big congratulations to many of my teammates last weekend.  There were some great performances overall with half the group getting PBs up at Leeds or over in Ireland over 10k.  Ben Russell ran 31:04, Dan Mooney 31:16, Ricky 31:40 and new recruit Dave Mountford ran 30:40 which is a great run from him. I'm looking forward to getting him on a long leg next year in the 12-stage.  Foxy got a massive 4min PB over 10k in Ireland running 32:58 and even Peersy managed to race, winning an 11mile fell race on Saturday despite consuming 3xMcDonalds, KFC and BK all in one week!   

Thanks for reading, until next time.