First ever blog guys so apologies if it turns out anything like Callum's first blog.... I've no idea why but just randomly decided to start doing this today. I will probably post once or twice a month and will be mainly about my training and how my seasons are going.
I'll start with the winter season so far... I started my winter work a lot earlier than normal as a result of a pretty dire track season and with the aim of making top 8 at the Euros this year. I changed my training at the start of my build up with a lot more tempo work than I'm used to and began doing cruise intervals which were completely new to me. These sessions really paid off as my reps times in other sessions were coming down rapidly and found myself in great shape really quickly.
Racing at the start of the season was going well. I ran a solid 10k (actually a 2 sec pb but my 10k time was awful) on a very windy and hilly Irvine course the day after doing 4x2miles! This run was followed 2 weeks later with my half marathon debut at the Great Scottish Run. The idea behind that was that I intend to move up to that sort of distance in the future and wanted to get a feel for the distance. Race plan was to finish feeling strong and leave with a solid run knowing I could've run a bit quicker. This might seem a bit strange but how many times have you seen someone at the GNR or London looking staggering over the line? I wanted my first half to be a positive one and not die a horrible death after 10miles. Fortunately I was able to walk away from it in good spirits. After running reaching 8miles in 40.25 I put the boot in and ran the last 5.1miles in 24.59 (app 24.29 for 5miles) to finish in 65.24. After being alone for 9 miles and being 11th at 8m my strong last section pulled me up to 7th.
After that came the road and cross relay season. I can't stress enough how much I loathe these races as I much prefer racing head to head. The races I did I trained through and never ran them flat out which showed as my performances were rather mediocre. Training during this time was fantastic and was pb'ing almost every week. In hindsight I got my race schedule completely wrong and should've done a few more head-to-heads instead. Even though I was flying in training my attitude to racing was poor... the hunger was gone and by the time Liverpool came I just couldn't get myself in that racing frame of mind. By the start of November I wasn't training as well which was coincidently not long after I changed a lot of my training again.
Liverpool itself was to be honest.... crap! I felt flat from the start and half way in totally caved and faded to 14th. I still finished second u23 and that qualified me for the Euros.
Since then I've had even less luck. I woke up the next day pretty ill and wasn't able to run for the next few days. With that plus taper weeks for Liverpool and the euros I went to Slovenia in not the greatest shape. The matter of our flights to London being cancelled due to Hurricane Bawbag didn't help either. My run at Slovenia was solid considering and a much better experience than last year's championships!
The week after that was always planned to be an easy week as I had to get my jags for going to Kenya in January. Again this caused another setback as I had a pretty bad reaction to the yellow fever jag which was pretty grim to be honest. I've completed one session since the Slovenia and that was an 8mile tempo on Saturday and missed a fair amount of runs. However, I'm over it now and starting sessions again this week. I ran Ribble yesterday which went a lot better than i thought. The aim was to get round it in around 30.15 but somehow pulled out a 29.47 for 6th. Felt a bit stuck for pace but was expecting that and had a good battle in the latter stages with Andrew Wiles and Simon Deakin. Jonny Mellor smashed it in 29.10... he'll fly on a flatter course I'm sure! This is a cracking race and one I strongly recommend!
Next up is the Great Edinburgh Cross Country International on 7th January where I'll be running in the 8k race for the GB senior team.
Sorry for waffling on the next one won't be quite as long I promise.
