Last weekend I re-located myself back to the midlands to begin my third year at University of Birmingham (bit of exposure for the uni there). The autumn term starts on Monday and I'm using this week to get settled back in and learn to live without my mum holding my hand again. I completely forgot how hard it was cleaning, washing up, using a washing machine and even getting myself out to do some food shopping. Even so, I'll soldier on. But anyway, you didn't come on here to read about my exploits at home, so let's talk running.

I took my winter campaign one step further last weekend and did a race. This may come as a shock to some as I didn't mention it in my last blog but when it comes to relays you know how it is, there can't be any divulging of team info to the competition. Truth be told the real reason I didn't mention it was because it was a very last minute decision. You can check out how I got on in the race report coming soon, or save yourself the effort of reading and just look at the results.

Like I said above I'm in Birmingham again. Training here is very much different to training in London. For a start, they have hills here. I have some tough loops which have many hills that are quite steep and long. The first week or so running here is tough because I get back doing my routes and I'm not used to the magnitude of the ascents. I didn't intentionally pick these routes when I first came here, it's just I can't find any flat long loops to run on. All I have which is flat (that I know of) is the canal. So that's where I do my tempo work, acceleration runs and I'll probably do the majority of my steady state runs there. Another change here is that I have someone to do my sessions with. I can start doing sessions with Steve again which will be cool. When we go on the track on a Tuesday there are normally loads of people doing a session there too. Back in London I do my session before the local club so the track is normally quiet/dead. I don't mind having loads of people there as it's a better atmosphere and makes it that much easier to finish a session when you know there are other people around you feeling the same pain.

Speaking of group training, a question in my training log came from Training Group? asking what my thoughts are on training groups and what my training group is. I'll answer the last question first and the first question last. My training group isn't actually a group, it's just me and my coach/Belgrave teammate/fellow Brooks athlete/ex-Runnerslife athlete Steve Sharp. Although I wouldn't call him a training partner, he's more of a pacemaker (joke!). We do sessions together but I do all my runs in between by myself. There is a huge group at uni I could run with but most of the time my timetable doesn't allow it and with the workloads I get it's a massive time saver running from and finishing at my doorstep instead of going into uni to meet them. Also they like to run on grass and I don't want to get muddy (poofy I know).  When it comes to group training I'm quite a fan of it. If you can get a group of athletes together who have a similar goal I think it can be quite beneficial. The Kenyans do it, the Americans, Leeds AC, Luton AC...the list goes on. There will be times when someone may have to break away as they need to do something specific but if the group has one common goal most of the stuff they can do together. In a group there are people pushing you so you run faster and you can surprise yourself sometimes. I know this seems contradictory of me as I train by myself a lot but that's because my coach only has one athlete. If Steve had a group I'm sure we'd all train together and I'd love to have more people to do sessions with. Unfortunately 99.9% of the time my sessions don't match up with anyone else's sessions at the uni so it's just me and Steve. There was a spell where Phil Nicholls jumped in with us and I felt the group dynamics were perfect. We were running fast but not racing and that's when you've got a group you don't want to let go of because training should never be a race.

A slight change will come in future training logs where I'll have mile splits for some runs. Steve wants me to put the Garmin on a few runs just to make sure I'm running at the right pace and not slacking. Not only does it serve as a way for him to keep an eye on my speed but I can also watch how my pace changes over the next few months as I get fitter and fitter. Obviously the plan is that I just run at what feels normal but as I progress they naturally get faster. I won't be looking at the pace while I run because knowing me I'll probably try to race the watch. I'll just run with the pace on in the background and look over it at the end of the run.

I'm in the middle of a couple of weeks hard training and the next outing for me will be the Manchester Relays for the uni next weekend. It's a leg around football pitches which is about 3 km I think. One depressing thought is that the next time I blog I would've started back doing lectures...fun times number crunching.

Run happy,

Goolab xxx