It's been a pretty hectic last few weeks for me, mainly with work and training. My business has been going great recently and I've really enjoying doing my web & graphic design work, something which was a hobby has turned into a decent business and I feel it's added some good structure to my life now. The last 2 weeks I've been working at British Triathlon where I was working on their e-learning resource for coaches website. It was a pretty intense couple of weeks however I hit the deadline of last Friday and I dropped into the 9-5 regime quite easily with the 6:45am runs not causing a problem for me.

Feel free to check my portfolio and if anyone would like any work doing just drop me an email:

www.ryandesign.co.uk

I do really admire those who do the 9-5 week in week out and manage to train as hard as they possibly can. Personally I really don't think I could work an 8 hour day and manage to squeeze the very best out of myself in every session I did. Granted you don't need to give it 100% on every session but it's a good feeling walking away from training knowing you've trained hard.

I'm now back to my more flexile lifestyle and I get to work wherever I please really. Todays choice of workplace is upstairs in the Hipac, except i'm taking a quick break to write this. It gets me out the house and i'm more productive in doing the various jobs I have on.

In terms of running, I'm just slowly building up at the moment. I'm going to be doing a few more races over the coming weeks to get myself into some decent shape. I found I didn't race a great deal over the summer and that's what I think was missing slightly was just getting used to flogging myself as hard as I possibly could from time to time.

The next big one for me is the Great South Run, yes, that's me doing a 10 mile race! It'll be an experience and a half, this time I won't be trotting like in the Great North. Obviously the big time I'll be aiming for is sub 50 minutes. It would be great to break that barrier but hopefully it'll be a case of how far I can get under it. I'll have my hands full though as the Hains group are all going down for it and them boys have been going well over the longer stuff.

Today i'm going to get out and do a hilly fartlek before it gets dark. I ran early this morning just so I could get an earlier session in. Group sessions begin next week so everyone will be linking up for the first time in a while and I think we'll be on the grass or track doing the standard Loughborough 5x5mins off 1min. It should be a good turnout and i'm looking forward to training with the lads again.

Finally, huge shout out to Wilko for his run at the road relays on Saturday. 16:38 I think it was round that course. Anything under 17 minutes is usually seen a pretty damn good and I think only 4 people had gone under 16:45 before he did. Fantastic to see and i'm looking forward to getting 1 or 2 sessions in with him before he heads off to Kenya later in the month.