An hour a day. That's my current training regime at the moment. I am slowly building back into training after my down period. I took a little longer than I would have normally done with feeling so bad and chopping my season early. Last week I built up to a volume of about 45 miles and this week is going to be about 55miles doing around 8 each day.

I'm not sure if John is going to let me do any tempo running just yet so i'll wait and see. He's back from Daegu so i'm going to meet up and have a chat about the future plans and see what's in store for the winter. Once man who is doing tempo running is John Beattie. Beattie asked if I fancied doing his 15 mile tempo with him on the bike so he had some company. I trained myself beforehand, 8mile steady then grabbed some lunch then went to his. We drove to the Cloud Trail over the other side of the M1. It's fantastic over there- a disused railway line which leads up to Derby.

He ran to the start of the trail from the car, a little under 2 miles then cracked on. He did his first 9 mile steady U-turning at 7.5mile, he stopped in the bushes to do his business as runners do in the middle of nowhere then carried on with his final 6 miles at race pace. He had a great session, he was really happy with it. I was starting to feel really tired though, my legs were cramping on me and I was ready for my tea as it was about half 5 at this point. He shuffled back to the car with me on the bike. I think i'd done about 18-19 mile and considering i hadn't been on a bike for a couple years and i did it in running shorts I had a pretty sore arse!

It as we got near the car Beattie realised his car key was no longer in his shorts. You know that little pocket you get inside them? We after some frantic searching within his shorts; yes he actually dropped them and looked in a panic, he didn't find it and we worked out it must be where he stopped to his business... around 8miles away.

He's just ran 15 mile so it was pretty harsh for me to make him ride 16 on the bike. We both went back to the start/finish of the trail to check and there was no sign of it, so I just got on with it. Beattie walked back to the car in the village and sat and waited. I flew out to begin with 3:30 per mile on a mountain bike along the paths. I got there quite quickly, around 25mins which I was loving as I felt like I was doing a time trial. I knew it was 6.5miles from the start of the trail so I just the Garmin, found the marker and began to look for where Beattie had dropped his guts. It wasn't pleasant, I'll not go into details. Lets just say with the aid of a stick I found his car key decorated nicely in the undergrowth.

I got back on the bike and began blasting it back to the start. After a mile or so my body began to feel very tired, my legs were shaking and I was struggling. My fast cycling turned to slow cycling which then turned to 'I couldn't pedal continuously' cycling.

With a final mile of over 6 minutes I made it back to the car. Beattie was standing with an old lady drinking a brew wearing a walking jacket she'd given him. I was ready to collapse. The final ride back killed me. We went straight to the chippy and demolished a huge fish and chips each and Beattie was paying! My Saturday consisted of an 8 mile run, a 18 mile bike ride followed by a 14 mile time trial. I rested the next day!

I can't wait to train with the group once thing get going, it's gong to be great. Thewlis has moved to Loughborough now, James Wilkinson will be here in the next week or so followed by Cragg who's potentially looking to move here and mixing those lads with myself, Beattie and Macdonald we're going to have a great looking 5k/10k endurance group. It's a shame Adam Hickey has moved back to Southend, he was a good lad to have around and a hard worker too.

I just wanted to give a mention to Mel Batty who passed away recently after an accident at home. That guy was a true gentleman and a fantastic character. The last time I saw Mel was at Hickey's wedding back in May. We were having a great time on the dance floor and all night he pestered the DJ to put Human on by the Killers. Come the end of the night he got his wish and he went mental singing "Are we human or are we Arsenal!" Mel will be missed by many and my thoughts go out to his close friends and family.

Mel winning The National-

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