Thursday, November 04, 2010

A Very Brief Interlude

Hey all,

Just a quick update. I did the RAF vs EAA vs Cambridge Hare and Hounds match as usual last Saturday. The achilles actually held up for an entire race in spikes! Sadly my big toe did not as I picked up a ridiculously large blood blister and lost * my big toe. This wasn't a huge tragedy as even though it's entirely raw skin it heals up fairly quickly and today I got a 16 minute jog in (despite limping most the week). I probably could have done a bit further as the toe despite being painful wasn't getting any worse but one thing I've learnt is that when you're having to alter your running form you should always do the bare minimum as you're straining totally different muscles.

What was awesome though was that the achilles didn't even feel the slightest thing (yay!) and the groin was likewise strong. Not quite the same as an hour at mid 5 minute miling but it's progress.

The race itself I was fairly pleased with my performance at this early stage of recovery but was frustrated to go down to Cambridge by a single point. Looking back over previous years we were dominated fairly comprehensively by them and last year it was, to be frank, a little ridiculous with our team of 6 closed in 9 places so to have such a tight finish this year was fantastic. Chris Rooke ran outstandingly to win the race outright from a strong RAF runner, Luke Allen did a sterling job on his return from injury finishing second followed by Dan Poulton who had a phenomenal last lap to reel in Angus Holford who looked like he'd escaped and ran a very canny race. Adam Searle put in a stalwart performance in his eastern debut.

That said I never like to lose to Cambridge so we'll be looking to put the wrongs right next year on their home course (and my occasional training loop). Hopefully I'm looking at seeing whether we might be able to get an Eastern team out to a road race as well.

Right - I definitely need to grab some sleep. I'm in studying/exams until mid December when I'm heading off on annual leave so it's frustrating to have the time to run but not be able to but that should get better next week. Working in the docklands it's an hour to get there in the mornings by foot but if I get in running, work all day and then study in the evening until late and just run home, I get 2 hours of running and enough work done I can take the next day off studying and get home for 5!

Toodle pip and all that.

*the skin off

Bryn Running

Training diary and musings on running in general.