This past week has seen the start of an exciting new chapter in my life - the biggest and best one yet but also by far the most challenging task that I will have taken on. Last Monday, myself and Moll received our keys for our first home, it is a dream that I have obviously had for a long time, but making it happen with the girl of my dreams is an unbelievably proud moment for me. The next few months (and some) will prove to be extremely challenging however, as we strive to turn this building into our perfect first home together. It is a house that has enormous potential, but there is a lot of work to do before we can realise that potential at this stage.
As such, there will be something of a juggling act to be performed in order to ensure that we keep moving in the right direction and plotting on with the building work and home-making, whilst continuing to grow on the day-to-day work front and build a name for myself in my own right in my trade, and also of course trying to make sure I carry on improving and developing into the runner that I strive to be. It is so important to me that I get the balance right and manage to keep on top of all three - and making time for socialising and spending time with Moll of course too(!)
It is going to be a busy and hectic period for us in the next few months, but I am determined that my running will not suffer due to it. It will be easier to say than do of course, and this first week has left me in no doubt as to the size of the task at hand. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, for one reason or another saw me unable to run in the evenings, and so I had to instead set an extra early alarm and get myself back in the routine of an early morning run before work.
Four times this week I managed to drag myself out of bed at 5:30am and jog through a 4.25 mile route and top up the weeks mileage by 17 miles. This meant that I was able to record a respectable 61 mile week, as opposed to the 44 miles I would have completed without the morning miles. Hopefully the longer time goes on, the easier it will get and the less I will have to rely on these kind of miles, but in the meantime I am going to continue with them and see how we go.
On Monday evening I missed my club night due to picking up our keys and inspecting our new home, Wednesday was spent starting to shuttle a few bits and pieces across and cleaning etc, and Friday I was Moll's plus one at a wedding of one of her friends and we both definitely deserved a night off and a few drinks to celebrate!
So my evening sessions mid-week were just Tuesday and Thursday, and unfortunately a late finish meant I missed out on my usual Tuesday speed session, so instead I did a ten mile progression run at 6:15 pace, and I did a similar 11 mile session on Thursday, but hit it a bit harder and managed to get myself down to an average of 5:56 pace.
Due to needing to get cracking on the house I missed the first meet of the Crosscountry season at Chorley and instead I did an early morning 9.5 mile steady run before spending the day stripping wallpaper, and demolishing wardrobes with Moll!
Instead of the crosscountry, I ended up running the Stanley Park 5 mile race on Sunday morning along with my dad, as one of the Wesham club championship races. I never really pushed myself too hard as I won comfortably enough by some 4 minutes and ticked over at 5:18 pace as I tried to keep it consistent and controlled throughout. It was a much different performance to Run Preston last week, when I tried to hammer it from the start, as I looked to simply get a workout out of this race and tick over as I had missed some important speed work through the week. I was satisfied with my run and finished in 26:27 and know I had quite a bit in the tank saved for another day.
I did a longer than normal warm up and cool down to add the run up to a decent long one to finish off the week, before heading off to continue the juggling act with work on the new home afterwards of course...
A final little thing to add this week - a good little video blog for you all to keep an eye out for and to please give a watch for me, it is a new project by a friend of mine Tom Marper, he is a track lad and so his focus is all about the speed work. It will be good to follow his progress under his new coach as he moves to start a new challenge at Liverpool University. Also, as his focus will be on the shorter stuff and speed work, I think it is something different to what this blog offers, and so could be a useful tool for anyone that reads this that is looking for ways of developing their top end speed. Give it a try, he's a good lad and a very fast one too!
The link is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXs5Cx3SgroTotal mileage for the week: 61
Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:24
Total mileage for month of September: 283
Total mileage so far this month (October): 22
Total mileage so far 2016: 2542
Average miles per day 2016: 9.28
