Getting old but feeling good

I may be getting older (turned 32 on October 18th) but after a few weeks of good injury free training I am starting to feel like a proper runner again! I have my flights booked for the 20th November to go back to Iten and starting last week until I fly out I am working on my strength an speed whilst also building up my basic endurance. This training phase includes fast reps, hill reps, strengthening exercises, tempo runs and the good old long runs. I definitely have no problem finding hills in Torquay as where I am living is on the top of a 400m long hill.

Last Sunday I cycled to Totnes to join Adharanand Finn for a long run, he is doing the New York marathon on the 6th November and this was his last long training run. Apart from getting soaked on the cycle to his house the weather turned out to be beautiful and we ended up doing about two and a half hours around the countryside and country lanes of Dartington/Totnes. The first part of the run was on the route of the Totnes 10km which must be one of the most picturesque 10km in the country but probably not the best course for a pb! All in all a great run and I'm sure Finn will run a good time in New York.

Adharanand and myself in Iten

This week on my birthday I was treated to a tough hill session and then got stung by a wasp on my evening run, lovely birthday presents! Looking forward to seeing my Kenyan buddy Edwin Kipyego who comes to the UK next week for another series of races. He tells me he is in good shape so hopefully if he gets a good race with good conditions he can break his half marathon pb of 61.23. It seems this year that half marathon and marathon running has really moved on with a number of people running 58 minutes in the half and 2.03 in the marathon, crazy stuff!! Edwin really needs to knock a minute off his time to start becoming competitive with a lot of his fellow Kenyans.

Tiptree Champion..... Nearly Essex Champion.....

Another step forward in training this week as I took part in the Tiptree 10. Some unexpected competition in the form of Kent ACs James Connor who recently came fourth in the Bristol Half marathon. Fortunately for me James was using this race as a marathon pace training run (aiming for 52.30) so I used him as pacemaker especially into the wind in the second half of the race, then with about a mile and a half to go I pushed on getting the win in 52.22.

This year the Tiptree 10 was also the Essex 10 mile Championships and as I am eligible to run for Essex I was looking forward to receiving my county gold medal. Unfortunately as I couldn't find my club vest (I think it's waiting for me in Kenya) I got disqualified from the county championship race :-( not sure what difference wearing a Winchester & District AC vest would have made but rules are rules I guess!

Back off down to Torqauy this week as I need some proper hills to run up, Essex is far to flat!!

Churston Champion

After not being able to break six minutes for a mile a few weeks ago the sea air down in Torquay seems to have done the trick and yesterday I won the Churston Flyer 5 mile road race in 25.49. Not a spectacular time but if you had told me even last week that I would be running that time I wouldn't believe it.....

I had some family support at the race with my mum finding her new vocation as a camcorder operator getting a few short videos of the start and finish of the race.

As I've said before Torquay is great for training and I even joined in with Torbay AC for a few of their training runs, a really nice group of guys and it always makes a run go quicker when you have someone to chat with.

Hopefully my training will continue to improve and I can start to look forward to racing well this Autumn.