The ITU Dextro Energy Hyde Park Triathlon crept up on me. No sooner had I started training than I found myself in the grand stand at Hyde Park watching Helen Jenkins romp home to victory, a few hours before the relay teams would set off.This was my

four months of hard training for my stint as a Runner's World pacer. But the route I ran on this fateful Thursday is fraught with traffic lights, tourists, school kids and an astonishing amount of other runners. So the last relay leg of the Hyde Park

it somewhere in the region of 21 minutes. It actually was slightly over, but I allowed for stopping in traffic and dodging umbrellas. So that's a full minute off my target time, with a little under 4 weeks of training time to go until the Hyde Park Triathlon

are common with increased speed training (some tips on avoiding injuries here). I'll get into the different individual sessions we did in a later post, but the evidence was clear. Speedwork was improving my times dramatically.In the lead up to Hyde Park I

With one week left until my running leg of the Hyde Park Triathlon, I visited Bupa's London branch for a fitness assessment. The aim? To find out if I've got the potential to run a sub 20-minute 5K at my current level of fitness and if not, then how

very high in the Barnard camp. Speed session this week (post illness): 3x200m with 30sec rest – 3 minute break (repeat 3 times)

, to give me a good indication of how I'll fare when I do the running leg of Team TW's relay triathlon in Hyde Park (in two weeks' time). But on completion, fighting the urge to be sick, absolutely spent and looking as white as a sheet, I was a full 2