SportsShoes Blog

It’s been a fairly steady week this week - bike to work Monday, Tuesday and Friday - speed session on Tuesday night (3 x 6 minute efforts) - 5 miles on the road on Wednesday night (few hills and the last half mile at pace) - rest Thursday.

I’ll be resting up tomorrow as well as Sunday morning I’m running for Bingley in the Calderdale Way (CW) relay. The CW is a 50 odd mile circular tour of the Calder valley. For the race, the route is split into 5 legs of varying distance and climb and each leg is covered by teams of two runners.

Relays are always hard work for one member of the team as no two people run at exactly the same pace. This weekend it’s going to be my turn to suffer as I’m running with my pal Martin who is much faster than I am. His job will be to open gates and hurl encouragement (read abuse) at me and my job will be to keep my head down and pull my tripe out!!!

The only upside to this wet, muddy and painful event is that we all get together on Sunday evening for a debrief (well a booze up actually) where we can talk about how well we should have run and make endless excuses for our feeble efforts.

Once the CWs out the way it’s just a week to the Santa Cycle - can’t wait….

I know they say that you can’t catch a cold by being out in bad weather but it’s spooky that after spending six and half hours in the driving wind and rain last Saturday I seem to have caught a cold!!

Anyway, this week I’ve held off hard training but using the training adage ‘if it’s in the head go ahead if it’s in the chest give it a rest’ I’ve continued to train all week.

After the OMM last weekend I had a rest Monday (although obvioulsy walked the dog twice). Tuesday I did a speed session (at slightly reduced effort) - it was so cold on the grass on Tuesday that after running through a soggy bit of the field, ice formed on the top of my spikes!!. Wednesday I did a 50 minute road run whilst my son Ben played footy and Thursday I went on a steady pack run with the Harriers (followed by a nice pint of medicinal Guinness). Friday I biked to work and back on my singlespeed and today (it feels like the peak of my cold) I’m probably going to limit my exercise to just a few hours of dog walking.

Haven’t decided on my next race yet but there’s a few coming up so it won’t be long before I’m on the start line again.

Watch this space……

Well that’s summer over folks ha ha ha - you missed it too did you?

I can now officially tell it’s winter as we did our first speed session on the grass last night and as usual - IT HURT!!

More than that we all agreed that Thursday’s session will be on the road as it’s now too dark for off roading - better get down to SportsShoes and get myself some new road pumps - my old Nike Pegasus are looking a tad tired.

I did an hour with my son on the mountain bikes on Saturday then an hour+ on the roadie on Sunday. My plan was to do a big ride but it never happened.

Did a few dog walks on Monday (does that count as training? - I’m telling myself it does especially if it rains!!!) then did the speed session last night - 6 x 2min 50 laps with a 1 min recovery. Then went to work on my bike today.

Came home and ate about three tons of pizza so better take the dog out for a good old trot tonight.

Tuesday night I did a speed session.

1 mile warm up jog from home to the woods then a few strides (4 short sprints to get the muscles ready) followed by 6 x 3 min efforts around and offroad circuit with a 1 min jog recovery.

Actually the fast lads were doing the laps in 3 mins mine were more like 3.15 to 3.30. I really need to work on my speed as I felt like a cart horse.