Against the odds by joggersaurus

Another week has gone past only 20 weeks to go before the big day. Last Saturday took the grand children  to the local nursury school Chrismas Fayre to see  Father Christmas (realy my son dressed up). the five year old new it was his father as the real one is at  the local garden centre! but the 2 year old was totally confused as she new the voice but it could not really be her dad could it? a great day though.

running wise it has been another good week,

Starting on Thurs with a 5 mile cross country easy run plenty of mud and great fun. 

 Friday was the long run day with a run  of between 17-18 miles still a real struggle over the last 2 miles. 

 Sunday it was  hill reps a hard session but one which I know will have great benifits later on.

 Monday was a repeat of Thursdays run just relaxing and enjoying the run

And Today i did a 5k time trial and completed that in 23min 12 sec. 48 sec faster than the last time I did that run 4 weeks ago so well pleased.

so as you can see the training is going very well. A  well earned rest day tomorrow

a few things have happened since my last post. First and most important I had my 3 month check at the hospital every thing is still clear at the moment no sign of the cancer returning.

ive had my 60th birthday and now i am officialy ancient, but at least the good for age target is almost reachable.

I have been puting a lot of work in to my running today I did a 10 mile interval session of 8 mins fast and 2:30 min recovery. The overal pace at 8:42 per mile was faster than my Great East run 1/2 marathon pace so I am well pleased with my progress. I am still struggleing towards the end of  my long runs currently 17 mile every 3rd week with a 14 on  other weeks  but there is still a lot of time left and i am confident that it will get easier.

my cross country runs are changing in nature now, no more mud as solid as concrete now but slippery mud and deep puddles, much better on my old legs and great for stamina building. and a lot safer, as most of the roads in this area do not have paths and many drivers seem to treat them as there own private race tracks. I have been gradualy consolidating my mileage with a few faster runs. over the last week I have done about 45 miles over varying terrain, with a long run of about 18 mile, over mixed terrain some footpaths and some roads. Very slow about 11 min per mile, but i did a 5k test run and managed 24 mins which I was well pleased with. So now it's keep consolidating untill the new year then start the marathon in training in ernest.

First race since my illness so i was very nervous before the start. Adrenalin must have kicked inbecause I did the first mile in under 8:20 before settling in to a rythm of about 8:40   from about 8 miles it started to get difficult and I slowed to about 9:00 min mile pace but kept on working hard to finish in 1:55:03 on my watch (the official results are not published yet.)  Well pleased with the time considering what I have been through in the last 12 months and  I Was aiming for under 2 hours.

Now the real hard work starts as I been accepted in the ballot for the VLM and want to get under 4 hours.