sub 4 hour group,if anyone wants to get together

Ikle, well done nice tri.
AH, the channel relay sounds awesome. Exciting. Speaking of crazy swims, did you see Ben Fogle swimming the Atlantic soon? He reckons he isn't a good swimmer either. Madness. 100 days for 12 hours a day.

Susan, great to see you running well.

DtF 12 miles MP sounds an awful lot 6 days before? Dont burn yourself out so close..
Scott too, worst possible thing as AH says is to fly off fast due to excitement, run your own race.
Oh, both of you remember to post your race number DtF & Scott assuming I make it to watch (see below). 3 other friends running so aiming to get there.

ironblade, hello endurance not a problem for you doing IM. What are your half/10k times out of interest, and are you a member of a club for either tri/ running?

R Leg/ knee a bit sore. Had to stop and walk some of the last mile of  18m long run yesterday & do some stretches but did manage to start again. ITB I think , but generally most of leg tight, feels like a bit DOMs now, & a bit of back too. Foam rollered and painkillers, Massage tomorrow. Was planning to do Ripon Ultra on Saturday, see Jovi for a bit but will see if I can run wed/ thu.

Jovi are you allowed to divert round mad cow fields?

Scott - paranoia is part of the plan.  Explain the madness to your wife - then sleep in the spare room!  My own personal pre-race favourite anti-virals are:

• keep a bottle of Vicks First Defense in car, desk, bag, briefcase etc
• massive amount of hand washing and, new this year, no touching of own face/eyes (someone said eyes are another way for viruses to gain access to the temple of purity that is your body.  No idea if it's true but being sensible doesn't really come into it)
• keep antiseptic hand wash in car, desk, bag, briefcase etc
• staying away from anyone who as much as sniffs - even spouses, kids, friends, colleagues
• Beware supermarket trolley/basket handles, pin entry machines, ATMs, door handles... cue more handwashing
• sleep sleep and more sleep
• fresh fruit and veg by the bucket load
• have I mentioned hand washing...?

Any more anyone?

Roll on April

hi FRC, I will be wearing race number 360, keep an eye out for me!!!

artful, I made the mrs sleeo in the spare bed last night, and am eating fruit like there is no tomorrow!! 

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that breast stroke was at all sub par. I just meant that I wasn't allowed to do it, because I was just keeping my face dry and it wasn't the stroke I'd practised. Sorry, breast stroke!

Scott - def worth sucking up to your wife a bit.  You know, flowers etc esp if you're going to chuck her out of her bed!

Ikle I was wanting to make you feel ok about breaststroke - wasn't having a go!

Susan is he allowed to apply for Ox and Cambridge? Have a feeling he isn't.  At least J has a bit longer to sort it all out, but it IS a bit like pulling teeth getting him to actually type words onto a screen.

For J Bristol looks like top of the list followed by Bath and Manchester. He thinks he'll apply to Leeds and Sheffield too but hasn't gone to see them. I'll get him to those two somehow before he has to make the final choice.

Bet Judderman (hellooooo???), Howard and others who have been through it are sitting back and feeling relieved they don't have to go through it all again.

Photos of J in his tri last weekend.  Makes me feel cold just looking at it.

no cant apply to both Hen - that would be too easy...

AH - do you suffer from OCD at all? all that handwashing lol. Monica Geller springs to mind

AH - I should be able to avoid mad cows - can always clamber over fences/walls to avoid (hopefully!) as long as you check in at all checkpoints you can in theory take your own route.

in other news, I just looked at the Routes Section on here, and tere only seems to be 39 routes on there, am I missing something? also, the routes on there seem to be 3 miles or similar. just wondered as that seems quite sparse...

Ikle i've done 2 ironman swims breaststroke and have come in well within the cut off's.

FRC i'm not a member of any clubs. With work and family stuff i do alot of my training at strange hours. My 10k pb is 53 min and half is 2 hrs 05 min. These were both several year back. One of my problems is weight . I fell into the trap of thinking i could eat what i wanted with my increased training and finished up putting weight on. Pulling  nearly 16st up the hills around bolton is no fun.

keep running, and a bit faster and the weight will fall off as you know Ironblade, then you will be able to run faster, lose weight, run faster .. you know the score.... 

Ironblade - as Susan says, with a bit of weight off and faster paced longer runs you should get closer to hte sub 4 and then under sub 4.

Scott - not looked at the routes section on here. I use Mapmyrun for looking at routes for places I'm not familiar with - there are a lot of routes on there - definitely worth a look.

Fido - did I read you were doing Abingdon marahton.  Cant believe it is a yar since you were cheering me & Susan on on the canal bank at Abingdon!

After work run of 7.64m for me tonight at average of 8 min/miling. quite an undulating route so pleased with pace, Have started running with uk parkrun director  (Tom Williams) and my mate Adam on a Monday night. The boys are very competitve which is good as it makes me go faster as they seem to get faster during the course of the run. I'm knackered now though - they sped up in the last mile and I was all but sprinting and still couldnt keep up - still good practice for a strong finish at marathon whilst knackered although not sure ideal prep for an ultra at the weekend

How lovely to run with Tom. He sounds fab. All his miling this summer has perhaps made him even faster than before.

Holymoly - no! That's taper behaviour.

Just had to finish the treacle tart... because it was very distracting.

He's a top bloke - very encouragong to as you run along and always happy to wait at the next junction for me!