Lovely new route

I went out last night and did a new 10k route which kept me on the roads (the canal is so muddy just now) but took me through the woods and down country lanes. Its very hilly and so constitutes a good training run. I managed it in 48 minutes exactly which is a good time for me, especially given the hills. I'm feeling as fit right now as I've felt for a long time and so I'm pushing the runs a bit and doing a few fartleks each time.

Andrew and I are building up the miles a bit each week in preparation for the Leicester Marathon in October. This Bank Holiday weekend we intend doing a 16 miler. That'll be 6 weeks before the actual race.

Back in harness

A big apology to those of you who have been checking out my blog only to discover that I've gone AWOL in the past couple of months. Basically I felt so deflated after Stockholm that I couldn't be bothered keeping a blog any more. After training really hard and putting in the required miles it was a real blow to be unable to run properly due to the heat. As I reflect on it, i don't think I even enjoyed the race because it was so painful. However, I received my diploma yesterday and a summary of the results and in comparison to everyone else I didn't do too bad. I was, however, humbled to see that a 69 year old man broke 3 hours 25 minutes! What a performance - I guess he must be a long time runner getting slower rather than a relative newbie like me trying to get faster.

Anyway, I haven't stopped running and have beentrying to do a few runs each week and a half marathon distance each weekend. Andrew and I did a lovely run on Saturday morning to the Tring Reservoirs and back (13.1 miles) in around 1 hr 50mins - given that it was again very hot we were both happy with our efforts. We are aiming to run the Leicester Marathon in mid-October but I might miss it because I'm going to Turkey for a holiday for the first two weeks of October and the flights are a bit difficult to juggle. Arriving back on the 14th saves us a lot of money as opposed to Friday 12th. We'll see. I'm going to do all the training with Andrew anyway and if I don't manage Leicester I might go for Luton in December. I'll keep you posted.

By the way, our apartment in Turkey (in the Fethye area) is available for rental. Go to www.relaxinturkey.net to see it and what's on in the area. Its gorgeous by the way.