Is this a mad way to start?

Tis ok here, overcast. Not that I'm going to be out in it except for a dog walk.

Just wondering how long a rest to give my running legs.

Sun is shining here, it is splendid

A year?

Nooooooooo! I have a half again in a few weeks! And I'm running back at the times I was back in 2009 when I had all my pbs!

Happier than I have been with my running for a long time! *bounce*

Lovely and sunny in London.

I have my kit, I will run

Enjoy! I just walked Cole down to the postbox, that's the extent of my exertion today. Loads of deer and bunnies on the farm.

Cuteness!

Well Darren passed his artic driving test this morning, useful if we were planning to move house I guess.

Daughter no 1 having a meltdown. Oh the teenage years are going to be fun.

Fuck this, I'm not in a good mood. It might be time for me to part company with this forum.

(one of the best forum exits I ever witnessed was by a guy on the USA site, he had a complete meltdown and was convinced he would be banned; getting banned over there happens much more than here because they are super sensitive to language)

The funny bit was that after his internal combustion, he was still free to post.

Right, RW Towers, ignore what I said about this thread, I was grumpy last night and ... sorry

In other news, the USA forum wants a full RR so i have written one for them and will share it here because i haven't done one for so long. Here it is in bits:

My running has taken a bit of a dive in performance over the last couple of years. Injury, illness, depression and just, well, life stuff all played a part in that. I completely over trained and over raced in 2009. I was on a high, winning quite a lot of stuff and then the wheels fell off. I can tell you exactly when, it was during the JW Ultra and I reached checkpoint 2 a sobbing mess. For those of you who know me, you know that I’m on the extreme emotional scale but if I end up crying, it really is bad. I cry probably twice a year tops.

And so I started 2012 in the same disastrous fashion as the whole of 2012 had been. Then i decided to HTFU and do something about it, actually what that means is that I decided to look at it sensibly and with the help of my running gurus, problem solve.

The problem solving was simple, ditch tri and long distance and get speed back. I’m very involved in race directing now in tri and I’m happy to take a step back and facilitate others in the sport. IM ditched and a plan formulated.

Fast forward (or back up) to last Friday. I wasn’t initially selected for the SWRR team. My latest results have been less than stellar and I wouldn’t have picked me first either. However I guess through drop outs and shuffling around, I was asked to go to the Welsh Castles.<span>  I managed to run a 1.33 non flat half mara at Plymouth the week before the Castles and most of those miles were comfortably in the 6s, just spoiled by cramp and a headwind which shot off a few miles.<span>  I really needed a confidence boost and to believe that after 2 years in no man’s land, the running gods were back on my side.

2 sleepless nights on sports hall floors isn’t ideal prep for a race, especially when there are blokes snoring and arranging their tackle in public (not my team I might add). Also there was a German (or was it the Dutch team) that talked loudly and late.

My consumption of coffee went up 300% and i found out how weird it is to be in a sports centre wandering around in your pjs in the middle of the night. Friday night was the worst, I estimate I got 2 hours sleep and a bit of stick for bringing my teddy bear (it’s a stuffed wombat actually, wtf is that? Is the usual greeting he gets). A stuffed wombat is big enough to shield your eyes from guys nads though)

10 races had been run on Saturday so half our team could relax at the pub on sat evening. By Sunday morning the other half (including me) were getting a bit jittery.

My race was at 8.05 am so I got up at 5am, plenty of time for lots of craps, you need to clear out the system before a race, rookie runners take note! Pre race breakfast was drowned with 3 coffees and a bottle of SiS... and a lot of peeing <span style="font-family: Wingdings;"><span>J

Gotta love this formatting!

Was that a flounce........

As Wales is not a flat country, the relay consists of several mountain stages, luckily mine was not one of them. The plan in my head was to aim for steady 6.40 min miles and to tuck in behind whichever female was in the lead. I was secretly hoping for top 3 but knew that this race attracts really good runners. On the start line I tucked in behind a group of men and noticed that no other women had put themselves upfront. This meant one of two things, either they were not confident of winning or I was going to get completely outclassed at about mile 6. A group of guys flew away at sub 6, I stayed<span>  with the second group and clocked about 6.35 for the first 3 miles. I kept looking back for other women and couldn’t see any. I had no choice of tactic them but to get as far ahead as I could and hope my legs would hold out. I ended up running with a guy from one of the welsh teams and chatted to him. However, around the end of mile 8 I started to get a twinge in my calf and panicked slightly as cramp at this stage would not be good, that upset my breathing and then I worried that my asthma would come on. So mile 9 was a 7.32 min mile, i would get overtaken if I didn’t sort myself out.

I gathered my thoughts, and told myself I had the ability and experience to push through and I was just being a fuckwit. And I did just that, mile 10 clocked ni at 6.59 and coming down to 6.47 for mile 11.

Job done, happy kk.

Flat Foo.ted wrote (see)

Was that a flounce........

Yeah, I'm very good at them

Oh and last thing, at 6am on the Sunday morning the German team were going out for a warm up and doing press ups. We did giggle into our coffee.

can't change the typos now