I am pleased to manage to stay above 70 miles again this week. My aim was to have a couple of longer midweek runs and manage at least 30 today. It was quite relaxing being able to settle into a running pace and not have to look out for ice like last week.

I started the week with 7.5 miles on Tuesday evening and followed this up with 2 separate 6.5 mile runs on Thursday evening. I had taken my backpack with water bladder out for both of Thursday’s efforts and carried 750ml of Hoegaarden belgian white beer. It is very rewarding being able to drink cold beer through a straw positioned on your shoulder with only a couple of miles left.

I repeated the 7.5 mile route on Friday night then twice more starting at 4am yesterday morning. I was quite pleased I could get through the morning effort with rain and darkness taking up the vast majority of it. Listening to podcasts has been a real boost...

I was quite worried at the start of this week about how the weather would affect my target mileage for the week. This was based on the ‘Beast from the East’ influx of snow and if it would result in icy roads. Running on settled snow and when it is falling doesn’t phase me, one bad fall on ice could mean a few lost weeks of training that I can’t afford to lose.

I started the week on Wednesday morning with 5.4 miles in falling snow which was quite enjoyable as I knew I was running in conditions that will most likely be worse than anything I’ll face in races this year. The amount of snow that had fallen on my head was quite impressive

I managed two laps of 7.5 miles each day for the next 3 days. My working week was luckily affected by the weather and I got to work from home on Thursday which made fitting in both efforts before and after work easier. I then headed out again before...

I had a week of annual leave this week and was adamant that it had to include at least 2 runs in the woods regardless of how muddy or waterlogged it was and a long training run of 30 miles as a minimum. To start the week, I chickened out of heading into the woods on Wednesday morning and settled for the usual 7.5 mile route. In keeping with my habit of not making a habit of chickening out of things, I did a 8.3 mile route in the woods on Thursday and Friday mornings. The first of these was abhorrently difficult and I felt I had to watch my step a lot more closely than when I had ran in the same woods last year. After the first mile I didn’t really make an effort to avoid puddles on Thursday’s outing and found that once I went into a mindset where slipping didn’t bother me as long as I didn’t fall, the elevation and terrain was less of an issue I had to focus on. “Luckily” it was very...

This week I tried a different approach to including a rest from the long training run while still maintaining a high mileage when my shorter runs were combined for the whole week. I generally tend to associate most of my endurance base growing by being calloused to doing a long run each week and forcing myself through it. The risk around doing this all the time is that I end up either getting injured or resenting my hobby! This weekend is 2 years since I first tried to cover 12 laps on the Last One Standing course in Belfast. I really loved parts of my build up to this race back then and there were times in my training where I had been adamant I was doing enough miles to be able to cover the 50ish miles that would have entailed.

As long time readers of this blog will know, I got injured part way through the training and managed 10 laps instead of 12. The initial injury wasn’t much of...

This week was a good continuation from a managing to get above 60 miles last week. I had Monday and Tuesday off as the long run last Sunday had taken more out of me than I initially realised. The first session on Wednesday morning of 5.4 miles was at a good speed and I felt I had mostly recovered. This was followed by a steady 7.5 miles on Thursday and then twice more on Friday, one before and one after work.

My running this weekend was substantially harder than anything I’ve done since Paris. I did 12.9 miles on Saturday which was a steady comfortable 7.5 miles followed by a horrific 5.4 miles. For some stupid reason I had conflated it getting light with the temperature rising and was terribly wrong for leaving my hat and gloves inside after the 7.5 miles segment. For the final few miles back to my flat I couldn’t feel my fingers and the windchill was brutal. I had to use my teeth to...

This week was great in terms of both being able to fit in an extra rest day to usual (3) and building my weekly long run back up above 30 miles.

I started the week with two laps of 5.4 miles on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. These were quite pleasant considering the time of day and I enjoyed listening to the Pardon The Interruption podcast both mornings. On Thursday morning I went running with my friend Paddy and we skated around some black ice to manage our 6.4 mile loop in around an hour. This was the first time in ages where it was virtually daylight at the end of one of our runs.

After work I managed 2 runs of 7.2 miles with about a half hour break in between. I had taken my running backpack out with me and use the 2x350ml bottles to hold some alcohol free Budweiser and had some Kirkstall Brewery Dissolution IPA in the 2L main bladder (it wasn’t full!), this was stronger than I’d...

The training for this week included 4 laps of 7.5 miles between Tuesday and Friday, then another 3 laps this morning. I was happy to manage to set off between 5 and 5:30am each morning during the week and although I set off a bit later than usual today, it was nice to be in daylight for the entire outing.

I had a plethora of distractions to pass the time during my running this week, the Bad Boy Running pod (podcast) had another interview with Camille Herron which was just as captivating as the first one I listened to a while back. I also enjoyed listening to a rugby union pod and the usual Talking Comics and Sirens of Scream horror pods.

There was a brilliant line that one of the Talking Comics panellists narrated from a book he had recently which was “you are more than the sum of the things you do well” I quite liked the idea of a comic book challenging the idealised versions of...

This week was considerably more intense than my recovery week following the Paris race. I battled through some snow on 2 laps of 5.4 miles on Tuesday, one of these was in the dark before work and another was in the dark after work. I think it is sometimes easier to spot ice when it is lit under streetlights rather than during the day.

I took Wednesday off then did another 5.4 miles before work on Thursday, this was icier than Tuesday as a lot of the snow had melted then froze! The second mile of this route involves running on the pavement next to a 70mph A road so I was quite keen to avoid slipping out into traffic! I ran on grassed sections where possible and had to slow to a complete halt at roundabouts, using the lampposts to stop from skidding out onto the road.

On Thursday evening I did a stair running session where I would sprint up 5 flights of stairs then follow a 1/3 of a...

I found this week slightly easier than I had expected it to be. Usually the week after a race, I really struggle with my first run but the next outing is OK and I persevere through the shortest distance I can get away with the next weekend. In the past with training for marathon distance I could class 10 miles as a short ‘long training run’. Knowing my main goal for this year is a 72 mile race, this was never going to be the case in 2018!

I forced myself out the door for 2 laps of the 5.4 mile route midweek and found the last hour of the Talking Comics podcast just enough of a distraction to get through the first of these.

My new shortest long run had to be a minimum of 20 miles, this was based on my aim to maintain 50-70 miles per week and not being massively keen on using 15 miles as short training runs. With this in mind I headed out this morning for 10 laps of a 2 mile loop around...

My week began with 2 laps of 5.4 miles, one each on Monday and Tuesday night. These were both at a reasonable pace without jeopardising any speed I’d need for over the weekend.

I took the rest of the weekdays off so I would be well rested for last night. Similar to how I had used “Fight Song” as a sort of mantra for the London 2 Brighton 100km race, I had decided to use a Bruce Springsteen song called “Darkness On The Edge Of Town” for persevering through the first time I’d attempt a complete night of running.

This was one of my favourite childhood songs and I always loved the defiant nature of the second and last verses. The idea that something more than money or relationships was that intrinsically important to him really resonated with me. I think the elements of battle within yourself and his acknowledgement of the difficulties he’d faced giving his life a purpose transcends the...