Haha, I'm just looking out the window and it's pretty miserable. My morning run has already turned into an afternoon run. Time to man up.

Also, thanks for the thoughts on the Garmin. I ended up getting a forerunner 210. Pretty basic, but that's all I need.

Scared you'll melt? Get out there! :d

10th November

23km, 738m climbing, 2:19

Decided to take my long run for this week out on the hills. I wanted to get in a run that was actually a proper run so I chose the gamekeeper's tracks on a local hill - when you go out for long runs in the proper mountains you're forced to a walk on a lot of the climbs. There are these Landrover tracks that cross the hills where I went this morning, so you've got a good surface to run on and no gradients that are too steep to run, although some of them are on the borderline, especially when you're 10 miles into the run! Despite feeling like I needed to walk at a few points, especially on the way back when I was tired and there were a few of the steepest parts, I kept on my toes the whole way. Low cloud meant I was running in low visibility for the most part and the 40mph winds blasting across the tops didn't help either. It was pretty grim, but still a cracking morning out.

Elevation profile:



I took a few pics but the visibility was so bad in the cloud that there's nothing worth sharing.

Good stuff Ron ..

You are starting to motivate me to venture into the Welsh hills.

Well if I can do that with a run in howling winds and low visibility, you'll definitely be getting out there when I finally get a really nice day in The Lakes.

Have you ever been out walking in the hills? That's how I got into fell running in the first place. I did a lot of walking, then started running, and then combined the two. I've never been to the Welsh hills though, that's something that's on my list to do at some point.

A really good friend of mine spends a lot of his spare time walking in the welsh mountains with his dog.

Me and my lad accompanied him a few times on a few weekends and found it a lot of fun.

If im not in Cardiff this weekend ill pop round and see him and discuss some possible running routes he might have used as he ran the Cardiff half marathon a couple of years ago.

I did my 8k on Monday and im now reaching the kind of distances that are a little too tedious to do on a treadmill.

I was fine with running a 5k on a treadmill because it does not take all that long ... but now im trying to up my distances ... i now have only one real option

Sounds good Hap. Get out there asap, although I wouldn't recommend jumping straight into running the proper hills and mountains. Get a taste for running outside on flatter easier routes first. If like me you find the roads boring, look around for some decent off road trails, bridleways, canal/river paths etc. For me, reading the maps and working out my next route is half of the fun.

Man I underestimated that run this morning. I fired up a poker session this afternoon, got about 20 hands into it and had to quit because I was so tired I just couldn't think straight. I have no idea why, but when I planned the run, I only thought about the extra couple of km that I was adding onto my previous long run. The 800m of climbing somehow escaped me!

12th November

5.8km, 33:16, nice and easy paced flat off-road run

Had yesterday off as was feeling whacked from Wednesday's run, and also my knee was a bit sore. I've had ITB problems in the past that have kept me out for ages, and it was a slight flare-up of that so I did tons of foam rolling, had a rest, and it seems fine now.

My plan for the rest of this week is to do a longer slow run tomorrow, maybe 10k or so, and then a speed session on Saturday. I think I'm going to replace my next scheduled long run on Monday with another speed/intervals session.

I've got a couple of races coming up. Next weekend is Arnside Knott fell race, about 5.5 miles (9k) and 280m of climbing, then the weekend after is a relay race that I'm organising my club's teams for. It's 4 runners per team, each running round a 10k/300m loop. At the moment we have 3 teams and a runner left over, so I'm anticipating not having 4 full teams. This means at least someone, which is probably going to be me, is going to have to run two legs.

13th November

7.9km, 46:14, another easy paced flat off-road run down the canal

Hopefully will be doing some sort of speed/interval session tomorrow. Haven't decided exactly what yet. The alternative is to go and run a 5k again at Parkrun. Will decide later.

Good morning Ron.

Did my speed run this morning at 5kmph / 13kmph ( 100m / 400m )

Did 10 sets for 5k and it very nearly killed me.

Not sure what my plans are yet for my 3 runs next week.

Good work Hap - that sounds more like it for a speed session. Take at least a day off to recover from that, and I'd suggest making your next run a very easy one before you do another longer run.

I have a gym session tomorrow and then ill enjoy my Sunday day off .

My next run is on Monday so im hoping ill be just fine to do a slow 8k.

Not going to Cardiff this weekend so ill pop into my mates house and discuss some possible near by run routes.

14th November

2.5km warm-up then 8x 400m reps with a 20m climb, followed by a 2.5km cool down back home.

A 20m climb might not sound like much, but when it's part of a 400m sprint, trust me it's tough, especially when the steepest part is at the end.

I did this session a few months ago, although I only did 5 reps that time. I didn't track it with my Garmin but I'm pretty sure that my reps were all in the 1:45-1:55 range, whereas today they were all within 1:36-1:45 so that's really promising for my progress.

I want to do another speed session on either Monday or Tuesday, and an idea I had was to go out and attack some of the local Strava segments. Seems a good way to mix up the session and have a bit of fun with it instead of just grinding away on the same back-and-forth like most rep sessions.

16th November

Segment wars! I stuck with my plan and went out for a speed session, attacking 6 of the local Strava segments. The segments ranged from 200-800m and were a mix of flat/hilly and road/off-road. Even had an unexpected waist-deep river crossing on one - there's a ford crossing a track, and the water is usually less than a foot deep and there are stepping stones. I hadn't banked on the recent rains swelling the river to twice as wide and 3 times as deep, but by the time I got to it I was already 3/4 the way through that segment so I just ploughed on through. I did 6 segments but my GPS went a bit awry on one of them and it didn't count, which was annoying as I would have got 1st place for that. Of the others, I got 3 first places, a 3rd and a 7th. The one that was 3rd I think I can probably top the list if I get to the segment fresh and nail it. The one where I was 7th seems to have been won by an absolute beast so while I think it's possible for me to get 2nd, there's no way I'm closing the rest of the gap to 1st.

I've never really bothered with Strava segments before, but I found it a fun and motivating way to structure a speed session. Rather than running the same stretch over and over, you get a variety of sections to push yourself on, and the motivation is there to try and get as high up the leaderboard as possible, so you really push hard. I'll definitely do more of these sessions in the future.

17th Nobvember

4.5km, 26:00, nice easy run down the canal.

Going to do my club run tomorrow night, then will just do one more easy run on Friday so that I get an easy few days in the run up to the race on Sunday. Really looking forward to it as I've not run a proper race for about six weeks now and have been training hard so will be interesting to see if the training has paid off at all yet. Only problem there is that with it being a fell race that I've not done before it's going to be hard to actually judge my performance beyond seeing how I do relative to other people in my club.

18th November

5.9km, 210m climbing, 46:00 - My normal club run except I only did one lap of the hill because the weather was atrocious. It was blowing around 50mph on the top of the hill, and at the end of the first lap it started with torrential freezing rain that was blowing horizontally straight across our faces. Some others went on to do a 2nd lap, but while I'm all for putting the miles in and not giving in to the weather, the warm dry pub was too inviting.

Had yesterday off, and will prob have today off too. Short easy run tomorrow then race on Sunday.

Sunday's race isn't a big one, just a smallish local hill called Arnside Knott.....



It's listed at 5.5 miles (8.9km) with 280m climbing. So while it's not massive, I expect it all to be runnable and it's that kinda distance where you're pushing hard the entire time, so it should be a pretty tough race. Add in to the mix the fact that there are about 10-12 of my club there too and that will make it even harder as the competitive juices will be flowing!

21st November

5.1km, ~30:00, just an easy paced run down the canal as usual, nothing to report!

22nd November

Arnside Knott Fell Race

8.6km, 294m climbing - 40:27

Official results aren't out yet but I timed it at 40:27 and my position was something like 13th out of about 160 runners.

Unbelievably lucky with conditions again for race day. After two weeks of heavy rain we got a cold but clear, still and dry day, absolutely perfect running conditions.

The race started with a short lap around the field to thin the pack out before entering a bit of a bottleneck to start the first climb. I'd heard about the bottleneck before the race so decided to get off to a quick start, but even then was pretty shocked to be running in a leading pack of about 7 others for the first few hundred metres. I figured I'd probably gone off too fast, so tried to slow a little, but was feeling pretty good so didn't slow too much.

The route goes first over a small hill before descending to the coast, then a flat section before hitting the main hill. All the way over the first hill I was keeping pace with a guy that I recognise from other races and knew that I shouldn't really be anywhere near him at that point, but I was still feeling good so just kept it going. He started to pull away on the flat section as expected, but I was surprised to still feel pretty strong. At this point I realised that I was ahead of a guy from my club, who I'll call AC, who has been our club champion for years. I know that he's been injured this year and is not at his peak, but to beat him would be a huge achievement for me, so that pushed me to keep up the pace and not slack off.

The main climb was tough because it was all runnable for me. Some of it was borderline but with my teammate chasing me somewhere close behind I forced myself to keep on my toes and not slow to a walk at all. I kept looking behind but because of the twisting paths and hills I couldn't see him, but knew he was there somewhere. On the summit where it flattened out we did a small loop before heading back down on the same path. At this point I saw AC on the other side of the summit loop, probably about 30s behind me. Knowing that he's a strong descender and would probably have paced himself better than me meant I had to nail it from here to keep him at bay. I figured I'd be his equal on the descent but thought he'd be able to catch me on either the flat section or the smaller hill near the end (the route was an out and back, retracing the same route on the way back).

I've rarely pushed as hard as on the final few km of this race. Knowing that I was on for a good position, and that I could beat my teammate if I just kept it going was huge motivation. All the way up and over the final hill I kept looking back expecting him to be just behind me, but he never appeared. When I got down to the finish field I had a pack of 3-4 guys all chasing me down, and could hear one of the spectators shouting "go on, you can catch him!" so that gave me even more of a push to put in a big sprint finish and hold them all off.

It's hard to quantify how well I did because you can't compare one fell race to another really, but knowing that I beat AC, and looking at the other runners around me at the finish, some of whom I recognised from other races, I could tell that this was one of the best performances I've ever had. Looks like the hard training is definitely starting to pay off!

The elevation profile:



Me near the top of the main climb:

Official time and position for the race was 19/137 in 40:28. Not quite the top 10% that I thought I'd got but still really happy with my run and I'll settle for top 15%

Sounds like you nailed it...nicely done! Your post race TR's are fantastic!

Thanks man. Wasn't even sure anybody was reading them, so good to know you are.

24th November

7.7km, 49:45, 182m climbing - Nice easy run around a small local hill this morning.

This is one of my favourite local runs. Starts off on a flattish wooded trail running alongside the river, then a short sharp climb to the summit of the hill. Down the other side, along the road for five minutes then back onto a track that takes you up a gentle climb all the way back to where you first hit the hill and then you retrace your tracks back through the woods. Sometimes I'll cut off the trail before the woods and run back up to the top of the hill, but was still feeling a bit heavy-legged from Sunday so I took the easier option.

You can see on the elevation profile the short steep climb to the top at around the 2k mark. At the start of the year I could only make it about halfway up before stopping to walk. After a month or so of training I managed to run it all the way, but it killed me. I've got slowly better at it over the rest of the year, and now while it still has a few quad burning sections, I don't even think twice about running all the way.

i read it all as well

Ty Tron!



25th November

10.5km, 320m climbing, 1:23

Normal Wednesday night club run. Did the two laps this time. Took it really easy and felt pretty strong the whole way.

Next race is on Sunday. It's a relay race with teams of 4, each runner doing an individual lap around a 10k course with about 300m of climbing. The weather's looking potentially awful, and the course is apparently boggy at the best of times. Could be a total mudbath, especially by the time I get to run the last leg for my team and several hundred people have already been round the course.

I've organised 16 people from my club to enter as 4 teams. Everything seems to be going pretty smoothly right now, just hope everyone turns up and runs on Sunday.