Here we go...

OK, the Christmas holiday is over and it's time for me to get back in training for the new year. I'll be doing a lot of races this year and if anybody is interested in tracking my progress this is where I'll be posting race reports and (if I get time) some of my training logs. I'm aiming to do one marathon or ultra marathon a month for 2009 as well as a few half marathons and as many triathlons I can fit in. I really like triathlon so I'm looking forward to the new season starting. i'm aiming to do Blenheim with the University club and a few others with the town club.

My first race of 2009 will be Gloucester 50K on the 25th of Jan http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/events/viewevent.asp?sp=&v=2&EN=45692 followed by the Watford half marathon on the 1st Feb.

Reports from my last two races in 2008 are below as a taster.

Just before Christmas running was going well on the weekend of the 14th Dec 2008 I was in the
Hastings 100th Anniversary Marathon. My watch said I did it 3:25:59. A few minutes slower than my best time for the distance set in September 2008 in Berlin but I was still quite happy as this course was cold, wet and very hilly compared to Berlin which was warm, dry and flat. In addition I think I still had the 30 miler Doyen of the Downs (http://www.extremerunning.org/index.php?page=Doyen%20of%20the%20Downs) in my legs (the last six miles on Sunday were really painful) but all in all not a bad way to end the year. Especially I discovered that the runnersworld website lists sub three hours as an advanced marathon time :-)

The Doyen of the Downs race the weekend before last was the longest race I have ever done in fact. It was 30 miles across the South Downs. It was great. We started off in a small town called Arundel at 8am. Dawn was just breaking and there was frost on the ground. The countryside round there is so pretty it was almost like running in a snowglobe This is the first off road race I have done and it was hard, really different to anything I have done before. We ran along the river, through a forest, up some bloody big hills and through a bog (which I really didn't like). It was amazing watching some people on the muddy hills, they were so sure footed. I wasn't! I fell over a load of times and missed some of the markers, my trainers were so black by the end that I had to hose them down when I got home and but I did finish and a lot of people didn't or were too slow.

They had biscuits and bananas and water every five miles or so, which was good as one of my energy gels split when I tried to open it so I had less than I thought. I had a new waist mounted water bottle that I bought at the last minute as well, which worked fairly well. The nice lady at the guesthouse kindly let me go back and have a shower there even though I had technically checked out, she even let me leave my car in her drive while I went into town for lunch. How nice was that? One of the other chaps staying in the B&B is apparently going for the record
for the youngest person to run 100 marathons. He's 22 or something and has already done 30 and most about half hour faster than my best time. That's the thing with running, you can train and train but I think the genetic component makes up a huge chuck of it as well and there is
nothing you can do about that. Still, I do OK I guess.