How much do you want it?

This week I have been reflecting on last weeks race, as you do.

It occurs to me that since the 10 in 10 it's the first race I have done where it was important for me to run it well......well long race anyway. Although I have done the 2 50's they werent the same. The first one was, can I do this, and the second one was, can I do this with some fecking big hills :-D

So I know now what I got from the TIT. I got the ability to tell myself (my central governor perhaps?) that I am going to run as hard as I can even if it hurts because this is a one off , I dont have to do it again tomorrow and any discomfort wont last forever.

The ability to be willing to push myself harder then.

I like that, a lot. It is tempting to speculate on what time I could have done if I hadn't gone out the day before but that is a bit pointless and takes away from what I did do.

So I wont.

Anyway moving on, I have mainly rested this week. Work is busy, but exciting so that keeps me occupied. This weekend I have swum, run and biked twice, none of it massive milage but exactly what I wanted to do. It's so hot I dont want to be running long, I have plenty of that in my future, and probably plenty of cooler weather to do it in. I have really enjoyed cycling despite meeting someone yesterday who really did appear to want to kill me :-O First of all he reversed out of his drive obviously not noticing I was right there, then 500m down the road he overtook and turned left right in front of me causing my already elevated heart rate to see if it could get just that bit higher. Still. He never got me :-P

Speaking of heart rate I have been recording my resting heart rate each morning to see if I can correlate it with poor performances or when I know I am not well. It was raised after the wekend for a couple of days and funny enough if you go out and have a few drinks that affects it too. I might do a small study, see how much your bpm he next morning goes up per 1 pint the night before. Obviously there will be a limit to this as it is possible to get to 0 bpm. We dont want that.

Lastly I got my VLM magazine. I knew I would but last year they never sent me an acceptance one so I was never really sure I had a place. I will need to run another GFA to get in again, but I reckon I can. I wont enter the ballot again.......ironically I have never got in through the ballot, and I can see peoples frustration about it. I dont think it's very constructive telling people to run quicker to get in, not London where you get the celebritys who dont train for it or people running as giant caterpillars. Maybe there should be a separate London for those runners who think it should only be a serious day. Training logs should be scrutinised and anyone not logging 100 miles a week (at least) should be barred!!!!! There should be a regulation short length, and only water on the course at halfway. Absolutely no support either in case it puts the runners off. Then at the end, if you fail to acheive a GFA time.....................obviously the womens 18-49 should be changed to 3.30 to keep the riff raf out ...................you will be shot.

That would improve long distance running in this country ;-)