"Nine Mile Track"

Its been a reasonably good last two weeks with short runs, a couple of trips out on the bike and also a couple of tremendous track sessions,including last Tuesday's which added up to nine miles and me finishing long after it had got dark!

The time between the end of the track season and the start of the cross country season is always an interesting one, do you stick with speed on the track or start to introduce some more endurance work? The answer from the coach last Tuesday was the latter! With a large bunch of athletes to work with, including two who have recently won international vests on the fells it was always going to be a hard and competitive session. After a two mile warm up and a couple of miles including drills and fartlek it was down to the main effortbased around 6 x 400 (with 30 secs recover) then 800m, with two minutes between sets. I was going well over the early 400s but the session really began to string out as time went on, including a couple of athletes who dropped out. I dug in, stuck to the recoveries and held on to the finish and cooled down over two miles, went home, put my feet up and promptly crashed out to find the rest of the family had gone to bed several hours before!

The track season is also over when you hear the club champs results and unfortunately I dropped from first to third in the vets ranks. I can't be disappointed as I missed a couple of keys meetings, not to mention quite a few weeks of training due to work. However I intend to have a good winter season and see if I can take the title back next year.

Next week it's the start of the cross country season and no doubt a long hard winter of training and racing, The following week it's the fantastic "World Wide Festival of Races" which I hope to compete in by entering the Congleton Half Marathon.

Weekly mileage 20. Annual mileage 967.

"Last days of Summer"

I always think that the end of the summer running season is marked by the last track and field meet. As always this was a Cheshire League fixture and is one where it is "all hands to the pump" to score as many points as possible to keep the club in the top three in the table. Held again this year at the windy and exposed Ellesmere Port track, home of West Cheshire AC I ended up running every one of the four senior mens races, the 3k, the 200m, the 1500m and finishing up in the last event of the season the 4x1oom relay! Amazingly given the wind conditions I ran season's bests in both the 3k (11.58) and 200m (27.5 from Lane 1, not easy when you are six foot plus! ) but the best that can be said of the relay is that at least we got the baton round!

This has been the first week in several months that I have managed to take on a full track session and survive alongside the faster "money men" in the squad (those that win prize money in local races). Consisting of 5 x 1200m (800 fast/30 secs recovery/400 fast/ 2 mins recovery) I really held it together and am once again looking forward to getting in these regular sessions as preparation for the forthcoming cross country season.

I have also started to get in some regular longer runs, including over two hours yesterday over the Gritstone Trail including a tough ascent of Saddlers Way at around ten miles (an ancient bridleway with some great views if you stop!)

Weekly mileage 28. Annual mileage 921.

"Great Warford 10"

Two weeks ago and straight after coming back from holiday I decided to run this popular local race. It's a fast, flat course and is superbly organised by Wilmslow Running Club. Not being really "race ready" for a ten miler on a hot Sunday morning (24c) I decided just to use it as a training run and as such was neither racing or taking it easy. In this heat this was a big mistake as mentally I wasn't prepared to really perform at all. Lesson being, either race or don't enter! I got round in a steady 79. 09 but I made it much harder than it needed to be.

The last few weeks have been a mixture of trying to catch up at work, getting the offspring ready for the new term, including starting high school for Sarah, and easy maintenance running including sessions in the Lake District over the Bank Holiday weekend. Next week is the last track meet of the season and the official end of summer. It will be an all out attempt by the club to secure its position in the county league so no doubt it will mean me running everything everything from 100 metres to 3K and all distances in between. Roll on cross country!