Alan Murchison's blog by Alan_Murchison

I am working way too hard at the moment, and it is terrible when work gets in the way of training and racing isn't it? Training has been going pretty well after my hernia operation and I am back up to 80 miles a week and now introducing some speed work. My first race in 6 months was on the 12th of November on a hilly cross country at Goodwood. All I can say is OUCH! We can now measure how things have progressed!!! Well it was a tough course to start racing on, and I had a solid if unremarkable run and had nothing in the legs after 7k, which I guess is only to be expected after just 5 weeks running. With another month of hard training I am sure I will be much more competitive. Mind you I managed 2nd in the M40 age group, so all to play for in the Hampshire League Championships, but I need to up my game as soon as possible.

Training has been great though as I am now back running with Chris 'the racing snake'. I have been spending a lot of time running the hills of Farley Mount near Winchester with Chris. After an end of season break he is back doing just 'steady running' and all this after a great summer which included PBs over 5000m of 14.02 and 10,000 of 29.33. That gives him a ranking of No 1 in the Scottish rankings over both distances, so needless to say he is a good man to train with. Hopefully we can all hold it together for the winter as it's great to have a nice little training group on these dark and wet nights. (Along with Lou the 'demon' Damen). It is a huge advantage to have good training partners.

We also had some more good news about the restaurants, because the Sunday Times Top 100 UK restaurants list was announced and overall we fared pretty well in the UK. L'Ortolan is 57th, Paris House 54th and La Becasse is leading the way in 24th. That is down to great work by the team and I really can't complain about 3 places in the top 60. It definitely shows how hard the team has been working and that all the dedication is paying off, so keep on pushing. I will sign off this week by wishing training partner and fellow realbuzz.com blogger Louise Damen the very best of luck on her next step towards Olympic Marathon selection. Louise travels this week to Yokohama in Japan hoping to improve on her amazing debut time of 2.30 in London, so come on, smash it Damo!!!