Training Log Archive: AC

City of London O race. Up early for the 7.13am Eurostar. Feeling a little tired after getting in from Korea around 9.30 last night, but really up for this great race - one of the most fun on the calendar. Got in early to London and registered at teh assembly area, which was a nightclub at King's College London. Apparently, teh club had closed its doors at just 4.30am, leaving enough time to hose the place out and get ready for teh health nuts to arrive! Great day for a run - 16 deg and slight cool wind. Started out by having 4 controls in the Inner Temple, which were quite tricky at speed. Hit them all well though. Felt surprisingly strong for not having done much training in recent weeks and all the travel of the previous few days. Had a few longer legs where I just felt I couldn't run fast enough and knew the speedsters would be burning up the streets. Made one poor route choice that probably cost around 30-40 secs according to the splits. Didn't see teh better route till well after the race. Had one hesitation where I thought i had run past the street I wanted so doubled back only to find I was actually fine - another 15-20 secs lost. Finished up with really strongly and ran hard all the way to teh finish. Wound up 13th in 41.35, winner did 37.45. If i had done 10 secs faster, then would have been in 10th spot - very tight times. Without the small errors, might have got up to 9th. But these guys are super speedy and would need to have been travelling quite a bit faster to make any inroads into the top 5 (5th place was 39.28).

Looking at the splits afterwards, I was within 1-5 secs on every leg of the leaders with the exception for the two legs where i made the errors and three legs that had pretty long straight stretches of pure running (where I dropped around 20-30 secs each time). So overall feeling pretty good about this result and happy to have yet another fun race in London. Wonder where they will go next year? Looking forward to Venice now - all entered and airfare purchased!

On way back from Korea. Early start - 6.30am flight meant a 4am wakeup. Pretty hard after the conference dinner the night before.

In Daegu, Korea. Lousy night's sleep as had forgotten to bring sleeping pills with me. Got up for an easy jog around the city centre. Not very inspiring place - lots of concrete and air pollution is very bad, even at this early hour. Not much traffic, but could see what it might be like as there are several 6-8 lane roads within a few square kilometres of the city centre. Can only imagine what it is like during working hours, and explains the pollution. Can't see too far from the window of my 15th floor hotel room.

En route to Korea. Nice flying in business class - no emails to chase me!

Up late doing work before leaving for Korea in the evening. Decided to get some quality in and did 10 x 2min H / 1 min E. Did okay and gradually increased the pace, which was 4.25, 19, 14, 09, 10, 29, 29 (last two uphill), 12, 7, 1. Finished up well. Left knee sore.

bad night's sleep - up working late to try and finish stuff off before gettingon to the plane to Korea tomorrow evening. But it was such a beautiful autumn evening that I prevailed upon the family to indulge me and headed off for a quick VTT ride in the Bois. I have a nice little loop worked out now with quite a bit of simple single track in the forest mixed with a few road crossings and short stretches of forest road. Nothing too technical at all, but nice nonetheless. Am gradually getting fitter on the VTT and am enjoying belting around at some pace, although have to be careful of runners and dogwalkers (and dogs). Cycled hard and pushed up the inclines.