Auviour Paris: So long and thanks for the cobbles

Congratulations Oscarr!  I like "Aira" - unusual name.  From the look of the weather, appropriate for today too 

I'm just letting my breakfast settle before I head out.  It's dark outside, but the good news is that the days are officially getting longer again - hoorah!! 

Thanks Ten - Aira is a small place in the lakes chosen to remember my wife.

oscarr: Congratulations!!! And I hope your ok

Congratulations Oscarr, and lots of love and light to you at this so time of joy and pain.

Congratulations Oscarr - the wheel of life keeps turning. A Christmas baby in the family is cool.....

Soggy Newbury parkrun for me today which was the Club winter 5km challenge, scored I think on age grade. Loads of club vests on show and I got round a very wet course in 20:41 which might be +/- 2 secs given the vagaries of timing these things.

Anyway, enjoyable outing in a funny sort of way only spoiled by picking up someone else's track suit bottoms and losing my hard-won Abingdon (techie) marathon T-shirt.

Pleased to say eventually recovered the T, but lost the trackies which is the right result. I blame my oxygen deficit at the end, nothing to do with advancing years!

If I don't sign on again within the next few days - happy Christmas to all contributors on this forum and may be the road ahead be long, flat & fast in 2013!

Lovely name, I read that it meant "from the wind" - which is why it felt appropriate today.  Maybe not quite as appropriate as Reine, though 

Ten - its Aira Force, a waterfall near Ullswater - looking at todays weather i think a waterfall is appropriate !

Thanks Bo, Mike and Reiki.

Sleepy Bear wrote (see)

Ten - Because you are hardcore and know that once you get going there is nothing that Mother Nature can throw at you that will stop you putting one foot in front of the other!  And that's the best feeling in the world (well after the one you get from the well earned mince pie that you'll be able to enjoy guilt free afterwards) Ten vs the planet = winner is Ten!

Boy did this ever come to mind during my last few miles!  Mother Nature tried her damnedest 

The plan was 5m easy and 8m @ MP.  It was hard work keeping the pace down on the way out, and harder keeping the pace up on the way back!  The return was into the headwind and driving rain (not easy when you're a speccy git like me), which made reading the garmin difficult.  A bit of Milton Keynes marathon deja-vu.

I averaged 10:39 pace for the first five miles, and 9:08 for the remaining eight miles (4 hour MP).  Under the circumstances, I'd call that good pacing!   I was particularly pleased with the 11th and 12th miles, which were up a long incline averaging 2% during the worst of the weather (9:15 and 9:08 pace respectively).  That took a fair amount of concentration.

Did I enjoy the run?  Hell, yes!  I now realise why it is so important to run very easily during the recovery runs.  This was harder than my steady 12m run a fortnight ago, which shows the effect of training accumulation.  Glancing ahead at the schedule there is no way I'll complete the tough runs if I'm not kind to myself during the easy runs!    This is only the beginning!

So, that's my second week of official training in the bag.  36 miles.

My next run is 10m on Christmas Eve.  Bring it on!

Ten - sounds like you have learned so much good stuff this week and 36 miles in week 2 is impressive.  I think Bacon Sarnie's 4 hr plan from Sam only gets him into the 20's in week 2.  Good controlled pacing today as well.  Bet that mince pie tasted good!

Mike - great 5k in this weather and pleased you get your hard earned Abo T shirt back.

I'm jealous of you running peeps. But, leg has finally stopped hurting, got new shoes, so going to attempt a very easy 5 tomorrow morning. Been two weeks of minimal/no running. Feel fat, lazy and demotivated. Physio exercises seem to be making a difference though.

Great racing Mike!

Oscarr - the trouble is that mince pies always taste good!

Good luck with the run tomorrow BoD.  You still have time to do a careful marathon build-up.

I should hope so Ten. 

Excellent running by you, and by Mike of course. 

 I have had another Tui Na session this morning, and was told that he rearranged me so much last time it may have caused the hip flare-up.  This actually makes sense.  Today he got totally stuck in again, focussing on my neck as well as left foot, legs and lower back.    Speaking of left foot, the osteo had a look at it again yesterday, and whe I relayed the anecdote about my sister getting a stress fracture in the exact same spot doing star jumps, recommended that I go get an X Ray.   He also gave me assorted exercises to do to rehab and improve hip [which is now runnable I'd say were it not for the foot].    So I went to A&E after Tui Na and cococted a more plausible causality, enough to secure an X Ray, which showed no break, but a lot of inflammation around the tendon in the metatarsal space.     The doc there said I could run through it, just ice afterwards!  Thing is it would change my gait at this level of pain, although at this point I might mention that I actually ran quite fast for 10 minutes after getting off the tube a stop too soon for Tui Na. With a non runnery rucksack, and a brolly.  And that was OK.  With limited bending of foot admittedly.   So I'm thinking of biking through a movie or something, aqua jog might have to replace my planned quality progression run tomrrow that I was really looking forward to.   I haven't run since Monday, but have only missed a 5 mile steady and today's easy 4, so am refusing to panic.  I don't usually start VLM training til Buntingford, and that's next Sunday.     I did buy a very specific compression sock in my local pharmacy just now [no toes!] to see if that feels better on the bike.  They only had tan, you know the sort of thing.    Bo D I will be rooting for you tomorrow!  

Congrats Oscar great news and I love the name and the place too awesome spot.
Just returned from a very windy dark run with bro as busy day on. Mum and Dads 52nd anniversary tomorrow family do.
Monsal Trail was very dark and very windy as we headed out at six with head torches if you can run in the dark you can run at any time.
Enjoy your Sunday folks.

Thanks mcs - have a great day tomorrow with your lovely family.

Morning all 

I think it's the pool for me, give the foot another day....

Marshalled today at Reading Roadrunners xc lge event.  Sleepy - spoke to some of your Marlow Striders after - you will be pleased to hear that the Christmas fairy outfits were out in force again by the Striders, great fun.  Now for an easy 10 miler.

hee hee hee - thanks Gramps

Happy Christmas one and all - may your tummies be filled with mince pies and satsumas and you be allowed out for a run. Hope you all have a lovely day or two doing your thang!

We had a fab morning over in mcs-land - 2.5 hours of jogging on the monsal trail and squelching through fields with Rascal. Loved it! Rascal did very well chasing Ben along but ran out of steam after 7 miles - think we can let her off with that!

reiki - phwoar

 

For somebody that does most of their runs on the treadmill, I certainly know how to pick my outdoor running days.  It's lashing down outside, and I'll be heading out within the next 45 minutes.  

I fancy experimenting with a change to part of my route.  Having seen another runner head off down a way I haven't followed before, I'm intigued to see if it's any better than the way I normally go.  If I get lost, it might become an extra LSR 

Hello! Happy Christmas one and all. Ho Ho Ho!

Did five v easy yesterday and no leg issues.

Official start of mara training today. So 4 easy done, no leg issues!!! V happy with that.

Ten: vary that route fella, make it a lot more interesting. I've been eyeing up the local map to find some good LSR routes. Green Wheel/National Cycle routes are good for that. Also v funny to ask for directions using a cycling map and people ask where your bike is!

RR: good luck with the foot. Careful with those socks, you'll have to be knocking the boys back with a stick

mcs: enjoy the day.

SB: I don't like mince pies can I have loads of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon instead, please? Maybe with a glass of something bubbly...

Pleasant run yesterday afternoon during the brighest part of the day. Had to earn some credits by painting the kitchen ceiling first - Christmas spirit & all that!

Set off after 3:30pm so it was a twilight run really but stretched it to 12 miles on the sodden, filthy lanes (farm vehicles chucking up the mud). Had to divert up a bank or two to avoid flood water but nothing too deep...and had a couple of fast miles where I was trying to slow it down. On the way back I found out why - I was running dead downwind and slightly downhill of course had the opposite on the return. 

Decided to run even pace up and down the hills (Garmin 1,400 ft) and finished in 1:42:00 which with a hard 5km tempo the day before (parkrun), made it a useful workout.

Mother-in-law then treated us to a meal at the local Thai curry house so all good with the world.