Depressing January vibes

Winter has really washed ashore in Wales this year, the Sunday night run was downright awful, I left home weighing 11 stone 8 and got back 5 minutes later over 12 stone thanks to the latest in a long line of storms that had blown through Wales taking most of Aberystwyth with it and leaving the various rivers some what wider than they were last year. Consequently I only managed one 1Km run without drowning, before giving that up as a bad job. So on Monday I did a bit of extra indoor training on my exercise bike, which is now sadly behaving like my legs and is also knackered, it's touch and go who will give out first as both parties are creaking ominously.

By Tuesday the weather had abated a bit and I returned to the track for a sprint session, 4x150 plus 6x60m which was a little ambitious. My Achilles tendon was still suspect so I was expecting trouble, and so it was. First 150 went OK, run with the wind in 21 secs, second followed well enough in 20, and the third one clocked in at 21 flat. The final one began in the rain and a certain grizzly bear was waving at me at the 100m mark, so through the pain barrier once more, it all went a bit blurry and I could hear a voice saying "Don't go into the light!". I clocked 21 seconds again but I was more than spent, so after regaining the ability to walk, I shuffled back to the stand, grabbed my drink and comforted myself with the thought that I won't be doing the 60m's after that. Took half hour before I was able to contemplate riding home, even then getting the bike into the garage was a major operation that almost ended in disaster as the big Honda took more than one attempt to go through the garage door which had somehow got steeper.

My Honda on a rare dry sunny day on  the driveway

Needless to say, walking around on Wednesday morning was a very painful affair, despite several buckets of freezing cold water and lots of Ibuprofen and other assorted pain killers. But by the evening things improved and I was able to think about the weekend's Welsh Masters Indoor Championships once more, as thinking rarely hurts.

Thankfully by Thursday evening things had settled down enough for another sprint session, so despite the rain and pain I got stuck into a short sharp shock session of 4x30m, rest and clear the snot, 4x40m, rest and clear the snot again, and finish with 4x50m block starts, only I could not fit my blocks on the bike so I had to do without. Went pretty well, still not the sharpest of runs but the cold, the rain, the 65 mile bike ride beforehand all lent themselves as genuine excuses. Still needed a few buckets of ice cold water afterwards though.

So it was no surprise that the weekend championships went badly, I started bravely (but stupidly) with the triple jump only to find my run up had benefited from "improved stride length" and the plan of getting one in and scratching ended up with 3 no jumps and one rubbish safe one, placing me second as expected but with a crap performance.

The 200m was the main race of the day, and I was hopeful of winning that one, especially as nobody else had entered (where were you guys?), I got stuck in with a couple of M35 rabbits so did in fact have a proper race to contend with, exciting it was too. Came out of the blocks well and had made up the stagger on the others by half way down the back straight, kicked on hard mid way on the second bend and almost tripped on a fridge some damn bear had left lying about, shortly followed by a small localised detonation just above my left ankle as the Achilles gave out. I was just about caught on the line in 28.93, a time only ever seen during training reps. Consequences of such stupidity resulted in me having to scratch from the long jump which I would easily have won and had boasting right over the other younger age groups to boot.

Once again, it was home to the ice bucket, pain killers and the odd single malt, just the Tescos sh*t this time as there was nothing to celebrate despite one gold and one silver and a resolution to change my training round starting withh 4 days rest.