The last two weeks have been rest and recovery for me and no doubt your asking yourself 'what does Simon do with two weeks off'...well, your about to find out you lucky things! So with the reason being partly achilles trouble and partly just taking an end of year break before it all starts again alot of time was spent doing calf raises, icing, and other work on the damaged area which the physio advised to do to speed up recovery.

I hear you ask how it is..... you be pleased to know it seems good {touch wood} and the last 2 days of jogging hasnt played up at all.   Apart from that I have been relaxing, popping into London, going to a holloween party and just trying to switch off from running although I did run about 5 times in 2 weeks and a bike ride...I know, I just couldnt resist.   The halloween party was good though and now team mates house, Lewys Hobbs. Both himself and Hayely excel at the Halloween party and having missed the last two because it clashed with the Mansfield Relays I was looking forward to see what they had done, I wasnt let done...they had converted their home into a very scary place, there were photos of Lew everywhere!! Hayely had put a lot of effort in making tombstones from cardboard, scary signs everywhere, cut off fingers, brains and all the usual things relative to holloween. The best thing about Hayleys partys are she always looks after me. She hides an extra bit of her famous corned beef pie in the fridge for me, gives me the best room in the house to stay over amoungst other things and for that she goes to the top of the list for mates girlfriends....congratulations, you should be proud.  

I also paid a visit to lovely Windsor to catch with Nick (see contributor column), watched a couple of films on the ipad up and back which beats driving up in trafffic or even just driving up full stop. I enjoyed the delights of the new TRON film and then Warewolf on the way back, incase anyone is interested I would give TRON a watch. Windsor was splendid as usual and the highlight was probably an amazing sausage sandwich on a day out on the Monday, the Queen wasnt in residence but there is something very relaxing about the place although that would change if I was paying what he is to live there!!   On the running side of the break I have done a few little runs with Andy and let him win for a change but it was just nice to go out for a jog with no real plan of pace or how far. We did a nice run across to the big dunes in Bridgend one day and then Margam Park another....listening to him bang on about how good Swansea are, the world has gone mad.  

The key to the break was to really get on top of the niggles and start winter training recovered and ready to rock n roll, bring on the dark nights!  Before I go I know fair few people have now asked about my move back to Swansea leaving the Belgrave team, I will write a full blog on it next week but it was nothing bad or anything and I had some fantastic times at the club, I also made some great friends there....a great club.

hope everyone else is ready for the winter grind.  

simx