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Just a quickie, Pittsy, to echo Mr V's thoughts - my 10k was slower than yours (though, macho ego massage alert, not by much) and yet I'm thinking that I'm getting close to sub 18 pace. I think you'll bash one this year. I had a few last year and would love to get back there.

19.00 at Ally Pally parkrun for me this weekend, had a fun race (the event may not be one, but I was most definitely racing/encouraging the youngster ahead) probably not worth much under 18:30 on a flat course but that's still a step along from where I was, and I think (hope) I'm advancing week by week thanks to some good training.

Thanks for the good wishes all - and keep the "luckiest b*****d" style comments coming, Duck!

Good training there, TomK. At this point I'd look at that progression as a huge morale booster, and ideally zero in on it being a bit more consistent, even if the average is slower, with a shorter recovery. But for working out where you are and what you can do, that looks great. Same for you, BBB. I hope you have a training log (probably should know that) and that you keep a record of those splits - I think there will come a point, even if it's a year or so away, where you look back and go cor, look at that, I'm well over 30 seconds quicker than I used to be over a k rep.

Sorry to have missed you on Sunday, Simon. Didn't see anyone during the race, really, other than the 3 clubmates running the opposite way to us to give a cheer. Those dogs! They were certainly running alongside, though not in front, at least not of me, albeit looking like they were going to. Credit to the - obviously taken by surprise - owner, she didn't say a word against us, just concentrated on getting the dogs under control. Not particularly well, but I think that's fair enough - I can accept these things don't work perfectly, so long as no one looks to deflect blame etc.

Trained with my local (for now) club last night, 15x200m up a shallow hill. Very tough, hanging off the back, then did a slow exploratory 12m today. Tomorrow's another training session - this club offer 'training' twice a week, and I'm determined to keep at it till I head to Ireland at the end of the month. I've run with two clubs for short periods, not stuck at the training and then watched my pace-peers head on to faster things, so I'd like to keep pace if I can this time!

Hello all! Mixed news in here, isn't it, and I have some more in a mo. But the big one for me is a big YEssssss! for BBB. Take a mo to think how far you've come. It's easier to appreciate a jump when it comes after a defined period of hard work but it's no less impressive when it comes as a result of week-on-week improvements! Good effort.

I'm back from Ethiopia, and back from the marathon. The former was great, the latter shocking - I'd been struggling with some knee pain, but also had been a bit lazy, never really tagging on with a group and doing some quality at altitude, so my runs had almost all started slow and got slower. Never really believed in the muscle memory thing, but it felt like it was working at the VLM - I slowed and slowed. Knew the pb wasn't happening when my mile time slipped in mile 5 for the same effort. The highlight was stopping for a pee at mile 14 - standing still in a cubicle was so lovely I nearly stayed there! At that point, as you might guess, my racing head had well and truly gone. Having started in the good for age area I'd had a lovely build up but, of course, piles of people came past me as I slowed! As the 3:30 pacers started to disappear with 1km to go I had a word with myself and my legs decided they weren't so bad and I looked a twit with a galloping finish, slipping in under 3:29.

Which is alright in the grand scheme of things, but a big come down from last year, and being passed throughout a race is mentally tough. I'd walked a fair bit, so recovered quite quickly and ran on the Tuesday. Never done that before, and there was certainly some machismo in my taking it on, but I ended up doing a fair tempo run then and Thursday. Some good training since and some hard parkruns meant I went to the Sutton 10k yesterday hoping that an 18:4x parkrun might translate to 38:xx; saw 9k at 34:15, so 3:45 for 38 mins. I managed to bash out the final k for a really pleasing 37:57. Very very pleased with that - only 40 seconds or so off my best.

I'm hoping that the altitude gave me a base and I'm now turning that to some pace with quality sessions. Lovely to feel 'back'.