Sub 3

and a pic of me crossing the line

Great run, Viggy!

On walking, here is what I was thinking about last night http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e6ff90ea-9da2-11de-9f4a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2HxLPiMJT

Nice running, Viggy.  It sounds like you had to dig pretty deep out there and that the crowd support reduced at the worst possible moment (although it has to be said on a bad day on the Embankment I have sometimes felt that the crowd isn't that helpful...)

ES: thread wisdom is that pink grapefruit is the ultimate anti-cold medicine.  Feel free to also have curry, echinacea, vitamin C, zinc and First Defence (non-branded alternatives are available).  The placebo effect of each is nothing short of miraculous.

Well toughed out Viggy. Good effort, especially if your focus have been elsewhere recently!

Njord - sounds like a fairly energetic start to the year.

Busy old weekend on here again! Congratulations to Padams for a great C2C time, Nice MP miles from SL, welcome to M, good weekend double+Parkrun PB combo from Jools, good parkrunning from Wardi and well done to AW's other half for taking the C2C win  (nice 20 too AW ),tough XCing from Andy D, and great turbo'ing from TR!

CW -  Like the grass based long running, must be good for runs post injury/niggle, I'm guessing you were doing laps? If so how long are they? We don't really have any big enogh parks around our way to do that, but there is a flat(ish) grass plain where my club meets in the New Forest which is a mile around the edge. Unfortunately, like for TR,  it's very soggy at the moment. Happy Birthday btw

Clearly - Good to hear you're back into the realms of speed work 

MtR - mmmmm pork 

Njord - Highly impressive string of results!

Viggy - Nice time given the ineveritable upheaval that follow a new arrival (I had the same in Sept last year, but had factored in not doing an Autumn marathon on purpose!)

No XC for me on Saturday as I got a very sore back (straight after the massage session!) and decided it wasn't a good idea to slog around Kings Park in Bournemouth in the mud and rain... It felt much better yesterday so headed out for a long run, leg and back were pretty fine so did 7M and then 13M with the club in some delightful wet & muddy conditions in the Forest. It was a nice training run, some hilly(ish) bits to start with, good strength training from the mud and even some faster miles on the gravel sections (range was 6:10-7:30/M). Even lost my leg up to the thigh in a pool of mud at one point . Very happy with overall 20M @ 6:51/M. Could only manage a very pedestrian 5.2M this morning though (av 9:26/M )! Had a follow up massage session just to make sure my left quad is ok as well.

Viggy that must have been one fast race....it looks like the 'last runner' vehicle was following you!!!

Came 88th out of 2000 odd runners. Winning time was 2:08. The next person finished around a minute behind me, hence the empty track...

Thanks for comments guys.  The back-to-back sub-3 marathons were half-jokingly planned with some mates in the pub after the Beachy Head Marathon in October.  And when half a dozen of them turned up to run the double last weekend, they wouldn't let me forget!

Viggy - great effort and part of the world I know fairly well, having lived in Bet She'an (about 20 miles south of Tiberias) for a year.  Do you live out there, or was this a holiday?

Cheers. I moved out here 12 years ago.

That was my 8th Tiberius in a row! Have also run Jerusalem, London (x2), Berlin, New York and Boston.

Am running Jerusalem and Tel Aviv mara's this year, followed by a 60K ultra, in preparation for The Comrades Marathon in June!

Viggy - Congrats for doing what it says on the tin!  That's an almost Njord-esque schedule for the next 6 months.

Njord - a machine, I tell thee!  Get some interval training in now for VLM.  Cheesy naans are on me.

Padams - absolutely cracking ultra performance.  I think it takes balls just to enter such a long race where you know there's a good chance of getting lost and making it even longer.  (Aah, ploughed fields in Bedfordshire.  Cows on bridges... )  And big congrats to AW's other half. 

Crazy XC'ing through thigh-high Thames floodplain water for me on Saturday.  Madness!  The standard in Surrey League Div 1 seems to be getting stronger so I was happy to battle my way from outside the top 50 to finish 37th and 8th scorer for the club.  Not too far behind the lesser-spotted (not like that) BEJ as well.  65 miles on the bike yesterday, so should be up for another hard LR next week.

PP, I heard about the div 1 XC from a guy who finished towards the back - he said that lifejackets should have been issued to the backmarkers as the water was rising so rapidly.  Mitcham Common for div 2 was a paradise by comparison.

Padams - great result, maybe you'd have caught them if it was 50M!  Congrats to AW's lady too.

Njord - impressive list of results, especially the unconventional warmup for a marathon win.

Viggy - good going in your marathon, getting through the tough bits should help mentally for Comrades.

Good long ones for CL, Al, ES, SL, Jools, TR (lots of miles for a day off!), AW, Andy D, Wardi and M (welcome too).

PP - good result in the XC, if you stay injury free you'll fly round VLM.

Ended up having less time than planned yesterday so got in 13M in 90mins, shin a bit painful but not too bad.  Day off today as had more treatment on it this morning then normal training for the rest of the week.

Viggy - nice one, decent sub3.

Njords - reassuringly nuts, would be good to see you PB at VLM.

AL-P - the Forest is going to take ages to dry out this year.

PP - good weekend's work there, nice bike miles.

LJ - hope that shin behaves

5M, 1M, 5M. But, I must have done something to stir up the knee I damaged the ligaments in a few years ago as its pretty unhappy at the mo, and its got strong enough in recent years to commute on, run hills and faster paces etc.  Maybe I twisted it doing some hamstring stretching (who knows ?), maybe its related to the hammy issue. Anyway, I'm not far off being on the bench. It was really shouting at me going up and down the hill today, so I'm going to sack the commutes (the commute has a compulsory big hill both ways) and stay on the flat as a last resort before I then stop completely. No commutes means less frequency and miles though.

Well done Viggy, that will have put hairs on your chest!

Njord: berrrludddyyyyy hell. Worrying lack of any references to strong European lagers in there mind. Oh, and thanks for talking up the toughness of C2C 2010 ;- )

AlP -- nice 20. Yes, mine was laps -- 26 of Parker's Piece (about 0.7M each), with a couple of excursions to the nearby shopping centre loos as variety. Imaginitive, eh? I have done a full marathon as laps of the same park in the snow once... I didn't want to go on a distant adventure as I was a bit worried about my ankle (which seemed fairly OK today, slight niggle still but now in a marginally different place, so it can't be anything too fundamental).

Given that I walk for a living I reckon it does help, if only with recovery, though I don't count it as training.

Slipped and slided around 8 miles into work this morning Though wasn't that much slower than normal.

OS thanks for the link on walking.

I count is as positive recovery. Working in IT I need to get on my feet as much as possible! 

Joolska wrote (see)

ES: thread wisdom is that pink grapefruit is the ultimate anti-cold medicine.  Feel free to also have curry, echinacea, vitamin C, zinc and First Defence (non-branded alternatives are available).  The placebo effect of each is nothing short of miraculous.

Curry to cure a cold - I think I like the thread wisdom

Thus far I've made do with paracetamol & caffeine. I'll see how I am tomorrow before speed-dialling the local Indian takeaway!

OK, I should have put an appropriate emoticon after that post...  All in lighthearted jest, LD