Southern 12 Stage Relays

I always enjoy running on the road so going into this race I was quite excited, especially seeing as it was a relay. The Captain got us off to a good start even though he thought he ran poor, typical. Then, the combined effort of James Fairbourn, Will Cockerell, Mike Trees and Simon Jones meant that I was to set off in first. This was unusual for me as in all of my relays so far for Belgrave I have been on early legs so have had people to chase. Nevertheless, it's a relay, so no matter where you are, you run as hard as you can for as long as you can.

I set off quite hard and just tried to hold it the whole way. But the whole time my legs felt like they had no life in them, probably because  the first time I ran since the World Cross was the day before and it was only a jog and a few pathetic strides. I felt like I was running hard but was not actually going anywhere, not a nice feeling to have. When I heard I had run 17:01 I was quite dissapointed but not really surprised. I could feel it while I was running that I hadn't done anything special and in the end it showed. I think it ended up being one of the top 10 fastest times of the day which is still ok. Considering I hadn't run for 6 days, had a stomach bug and let the diet get really poor, it's not as bad as I originally thought. In the end I decided it wasn't a good run but not a bad one either, just an average run.   

Thanks to the likes of James Kelly, Mark Pollard, Phil Wickes, Neil Speaight, Russell Dessaix-Chin and Dan Mulhare, we managed to open up a four minute gap and stamp our authority down for the Nationals. But before then I am going to do a 10 day training block and try to get that bounce back in my legs I had before.

See you at Sutton Coldfield!!