Cold?

I finally just decided to get stuck in and ignore the cold. After a week of taking it very easy I was desperate to start dedicating some proper time to working on my lower back and core strength. So, Saturday afternoon I got the Swiss ball out and ploughed on with the new routine. Kept it all gentle so as not to prolong the cold though.

Come Sunday evening I was actually feeling anxious because I had not run for over a week so I decided that I would run to work and back on Monday regardless of my cold (total of 14 miles). Well, still had the cold and ran in but I am seriously starting to wonder if I have developed hay fever? I have heard you can develop it at anytime in life. This would be a major annoyance if I had! It is now Wednesday and I still have this dam 'cold'.........

Anyway, great run in to work and back on Monday and then a great weights session/core routine again in the evening. Still a little bit stiff but that might be from clattering over curbs when go-karting last night (bit bumpy!).

The last few weeks

The last few weeks have seen me get pretty serious with training and I have been loving it. Starting to look a little leaner and loving being out on the bike. The sunshine has really helped and I have been so excited about the 24hr mountain bike race on August 9th/10th.

So why am I sitting here on a Saturday Morning with a laptop on my legs? Well, because I have a cold, and jolly annoying it is too. I am really wanting to be out running or cycling or at the very least be doing some strength work indoors. Instead I am sat indoors with rain falling outside.

There have been some great sessions during the last month though, some gentle 15mile runs, some reasonably quick 10k's, cycling to work, the odd hill session (running), the odd long session on the bike and I just cant get enough of it! Monday night just gone saw me get a great 2 hour session in on the bike. Great practice for the race because it was mostly dark and riding by artificial light is a very different experience to day time. Not least on this occasion because I actually had a bat bump in to my chin and then skid off my neck as I was cycling along! That was definitely a first! I also saw a huge owl and cool little badger that.......I love that!

The morning before this night ride though I decided to see an Osteopath. Nothing particularly wrong with my back I have just had a few niggles over the last few months and wanted to get it sorted before anything went majorly wrong. He crunched me about and generally said I was in pretty good shape. Despite this though my lower back was pretty sore on Tuesday after my cycle and I reckon I really need to work on my core strength to compensate for the strain being placed on my back whilst cycling.

Other than these generalities I am annoyed to say that the first event of the year was cancelled at the last minute. It was called Tough Challenge (11.5.08) and was billed as the toughest half marathon in the country. A bit relieved but it would of been better to have an event under my belt.

Anyway, back to writing that training plan. keep you posted..........

I need more cow bell...MDS dates released

Well, well, well. Was expecting a call this morning from South Africa so took the mobile in to the shower with me and low and behold I get a text from my partner in crime, Charlie. Big news often comes at odd times and this was big news indeed. The dates for the MDS 2009 had just been officially released.

The 24th Marathon Des Sables takes place 27th of March to 6th April 2009.

Coincidentally I had been up late staring at a training plan that took me up to mid September. I was shuffling various sessions around and stressing about how little time I had to get ready for SPAR Coast (3 day Ultra of 105 miles). Spar coast will be hard and with only 4 months to get ready for it I am little pushed for time. Not too mention the fact that I am entered in a 24 hour montain bike race a month before SPAR Coast. The word 'yikes' comes to mind.

The main goal posts hav been laid out now. In 10 months and 10 days I will be in Morroco to fulfill a dream I have held for 10 years. Is it me or is there a lots of '10's in hat last sentence? Time to ge serious about all this.

2007 summary

Well it started off well with a successful attempt at the Tring2Town 45 mile Ultra Marathon. I think inexperience and less than adequate prep cost me better performances in SITS and Night and Day Ultra. But then, that is the point of doing these events. Hopefully I wont make a hash of the MDS in 11 months time!

Bring on 2008's events......first one is this Sunday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More info soon!

Oh yeah my partner in crime has kicked his Blog in to gear as well check it out;

http://www.charlierunsmds.blogspot.com/

Sleepless in the Saddle

A few weeks before the Dunwich Dynamo I was agonising over whether to purchase a ridiculously expensive light for this race 24 hour epic. I had resolved that if I felt strong through out the Dun Run then i would purchase the wonder light.

Well, Dun Run was a success and if I was doing the SITS race then I needed illumination that would last all night. The other tricky bit of the equation is that you actually need a light that is not just designed to make you seen by others (i.e motorists). For an off road night race you actually need one that enables you to see where you are going. This sounds simple and after all how expensive can such a gizmo really cost? The answer is hundreds. However, if I was up for this I kind of just needed to take the plunge and do it.

Anyway, what a lot of waffle about a light.

So i travelled up to Derby the Friday afternoon before the race and pitched my tent in the solo entrants area and set about fixing a puncture that had somehow occurred to my spare bike in the back of the car. Mmmm. Still scratching my head about that one. The whole set up for the race was awesome, there was a real carnival type vibe and everyone was really friendly and happy to help. I had a wander around the stalls and then got a quick lap of the course under my belt so I knew what to expect during the race. Holy Cow! It was a epic ride! By the end of one lap i decided it was time to treat my self to the big over sized handle bar grips that I had wanted for a while and had spotted in one of the trade tents. Suffice to say it was hard work and was very glad to have given my self a taster of what to expect. I registered my arrival and got my timing chip before having a cook up and watching a DVD in my tent.

The race it self kicked of at 2pm on Saturday and during the morning I took advantage of the shimano tent to get my bike checked over, they tuned my gears and even replaced a cable free of charge which I was very chuffed with.

The race began with a Le Mans style start where we all had to run for about a mile and then grab our bikes to cross the start line. All went well for the first few hours and I planned to stop at around 8pm to attach my light and get a good helping of food in before settling in to the night stage of the race. I remember stopping and texting my Brother's saying it was great, but stupidly hard and my hands were ruined and knee was hurting.

The hurt in the right knee soon developed in to get the most horrendous pain. I pushed on for a couple more hours but it became excruciating and I was worried I was going to do my self permanent damage. So I am guessing at around midnight I retired, pissed off, to my tent for a rest and then it started raining. I guess I stopped at the right time! I laid there in disbelief at what I was doing. When not riding, my knee felt perfect and I felt pretty fresh and awake and yet I had to stop. This was really odd. Eventually I fell asleep and woke at about 7am, I opened the tent to see other riders still going strong and glanced at my bike which I had dropped at the opening of my tent a few hours before.......

I could not believe what I was seeing. The seat had slid almost all the way down to the frame! No wonder my knee felt like it was about to fall apart. I pulled my cycling shorts back on and jumped back on the bike to re-enter the race. I could not understand a) why it had happened and b) why I had not noticed? The answer to the first question soon hit me. When I had taken the bike the service guy he has loosened the seat collar off before fixing it to his work stand.....I should of checked it after I got it back. As for why I had not noticed I can only put it down to fatigue and inexperience.

Anyway, so I got a few more laps in the morning and finished mid table out of approx 80 solo riders....bring on 2008. This time I intend to not make another dumb mistake like last year.

Dunwich Dynamo

What? The Dunwich Dy....what? Basically its a fun event organised by a London cycling club. It consists of riding 120 miles from London to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. There is no official start time and everyone kind of just heads off at about 8ish. That's 8PM! Oh yeah! Its a night ride on the Saturday in July closest to the full moon.

Sitting here writing that now I am reminded of what a romantic notion that is. Just think......lovely summer night, gentle breeze, full moon, solitude out in the country.....bit of adventure thrown in for good measure. Sign Me up!!! Well, at 8pm on the night of the race it started raining and did not stop until about 4am. It sucked. Without a crowd of people suffering with you its the sort of thing you would quit pretty easily.

I have to say though it was a bloody great experience and one that me and some friends had been meaning to do for ages. We first found out about it when we were leaving the pub one night in my little town of Great Dunmow and we were swamped by cyclists! It was an amazing spectacle so we we were sold! Had the Dun Run's route not snaked it's way through my little town we would never have known about it.

What this also meant is that we could stop at my house and binge on Pizza chocolate-happy days! I filled my boots! however leaving the house was the hardest bit of the journey, as we cycled up the hill out town I could literally feel my shoes filling with water from the rain and road spray. It was cold and I was now thoroughly waterlogged......with at least 6 hours left till the finish.

Anyway, the computer just crashed and I just lost a load of this post (that angers me) and I cant be bothered to write it again..............

Long story short we made it to the beach and had an amazing cooked brekky at the end just before my Big Brother collected us. I will find pics of me and Nick triumphantly waterlogged asap.

I hate it when computers don't bloody work properly!

Where were we? Night&Day Ultra Marathon

Okay, so enough apologising and lets get writing. Kili was awesome and so was the stag do before hand but holy moley that was nearly a year ago and I have written next to nothing on here since then.

So a quick update is due. The two key things that I should posted about are 'Night & Day Ultra Marathon and the 'Sleepless in the Saddle' mountain bike race.

Night&Day is basically 2 marathons in 24 hours and if memory serves me it was just 2 or 3 days after I returned from Kili. It was fairly local to me, in Chelmsford and work was rather hectic that Friday of the first Marathon that evening. My map for the race never turned up which meant I had to go in to town on the way to the race (which was bloody annoying), I also had to find a shop to stock up on bottles of water (which was bloody annoying) and what with work hassles all this meant I turned up just in the nick of time for the race. However, as I was so late I had to be a pain and hassle one of the organisers to mark my map with the route (which was bloody annoying and embarrassing). Basically, I turned up under trained and under prepared for a very hard race and I paid the price because I simply ran out of steam and threw the towel in at about the 20 mile mark.

I don't want to offend any of the other competitors but frankly I found it bloody soul destroying that people were cheating during the race, it was easy enough to cut chunks out of the route and unfortunately I know that some runners did just that. However, if this was a contributory factor to me quitting then the other 99% was entirely my own shortcomings. Whether or not I was fully recovered from being unwell in Africa just a few days before hand is perhaps part of it but every time I looked down at the map I was spinning out. I basically thought 'bugger this lets go see my little girl instead.' so I went back to the main road and called a cab. Owing to Kili and the stag do I had not seen my daughter for 2 weeks so there I was waiting for a cab.

Annoyingly the driver was a military man who was about to go through 'p company' (one of the armies toughest physical training courses). In spite of this I was really not too pissed off with my self for quitting which to this day I am surprised about. Anyway, I am still looking forward to doing it again properly one of these days.

I wont go in to any more details of that evening but I do remember having a burn up with an Evo 8 on the way home. That's not really anything to do with running though is it.

So, to summarise. I turned up ill prepared for a very demanding race ballsed it up as a result. Simple. Next!