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Good luck SB & Oscarr

I have no idea on your times as I do not know the terrain - I'm sure you will be a fast as conditions allow and will give it your all. You have certainly put the hard training in! 

Ten - re firm ground. After a while, the constant uneven footstrike wears you down a bit with no give in the ground but you're right, on balance it is preferable to slipping & sliding everywhere.

Make sure you have clear boundaries in your pacing of the different training runs that you do otherwise you'll end up in a narrow range which will neither build your stamina and endurance nor your speed.

Slow long runs build stamina/endurance and leave you the energy to run lactate threshold runs hard - a hard 5k is perfect.

Ridgeway Relay 2013 - 85 miles or so from Beacon Hill (not far from Luton) to Marlborough.

Start 7:30 am ; finish 19:12 pm with 10 runners. What a day!

I ran Leg 5 from Swyncombe Church to South Stoke via Grimm's Ditch and the Thames tow path - 10m in 1:15:12 which was 2:28 faster than our runner of last year. This is a pressure leg because I had to be at the end of it by 13:00 hrs to avoid being consigned to a mass start further on. I made it with 1 min 4 secs to spare....

Overall, we were up on our time of last year until Leg 9 where our runner struggled having come straight off a transatlantic flight over night with just 1 hour's sleep...gamely he made through to the end, but the time was gone.

Anyway, we finished 18/43 teams and thoroughly enjoyed it, complete with 16 of us taking over a bar for a couple of pints and a hot meal at the end.

Pure running - no entry fee, very few marshals; no water points; portaloos T-shirts or finisher's medals. Just 430 self-supporting runners and their support crews - magic!

15W - if you still feel that way, remember it's never too late....

Choisty - jogged round a 10k in 38 mins made me laugh!

I raced my socks off today at Wargrave 10km, climbs, wind and all and came home in a surprising PB of 40:34 and 2nd V60; 57/481 I think.

The course is a bit twisty, starts and ends with three sides of a grass playing field; then through a dodgy housing estate (only dodgy because of the state of the road surface...); then uphill for over a mile and through undulating lanes back down to the finish.

My splits (per the on-course km markers) mins & equivalent pace min/m

Time Pace

4:03 6:17

3:52 6:30

4:10 6:50

4:26 7:10 uphill

4:02 6:29

4:06 6:33

4:03 6:35

3:47 6:09

8:00 6:27 (from 9km marker to finish)

Overall pace 6:32 min/m 

Best of all though, for the first time ever I beat a local rival (same age group and member of the "other" Newbury club) by 6 secs. At our last 10k race three weeks ago he beat me by about 3 mins and he is a 19:2x 5k parkrunner....happy bunny this afternoon.