Through the first two and a bit months of the new year I had weeks on end without managing to get a race in, so it seems as though I have made up for lost time a little bit recently with a flurry of 3 races in four weeks.
This week it was a chance to get involved with a team event, as it was the Northern 12 stage road relays, which were held at Stanley Park in Blackpool. It is a great event and one of the highlights of the racing calendar due to both the high standard of competition, but also as it is a real chance to socialise and work together with all the members of your club as it is a proper team event and a full day out.
Thankfully recovered from my back trouble and with my periformas feeling much better, I was still still struggling throughout the whole week with the same knee pain that had troubled me in the build up to Wilmslow Half. A spot of physio on Tuesday evening led to a diagnosis of the problem to be a strained medial ligament in my left knee. The symptoms are similar to something called 'runner's knee' and thankfully I've been advised that it is something that I can just monitor and manage - so as long as it doesn't hurt or trouble me too much I can just run through the pain and hopefully it will ease off with a bit of time. I certainly don't want to be taking more days off if I can help it!
So having been told I can crack on with my training, I managed a fairly good mileage week, albeit with a slightly reduced intensity in some of the sessions in order to try and aid my knee's recovery prior to the relays.
On Monday, I managed 13 steady miles, 4.5 fairly gentle early doors, before 8.5 at the club night later on.
On Tuesday I again ran steady, as I decided on doing just one hard run in the middle of the week between the two weekend races. Therefore I ticked over with a ten miler at 6:40 pace. Then on Wednesday I did 2 x 2 miles with Rob Affleck. This week's session was slightly different as we chose shorter, more intense reps on an undulating course in order to try and prepare the legs as fully as possible ahead of race day. I was pleased with the session as I came out with 5:11 average pace - recording 10:20 for the first effort and 10:24 for the second.
I suffered a bit with the knee on both Thursday and Friday, so had to tread a bit more carefully than I would have liked and I just trotted out 7.5 miles each evening at 6:50s.
I got lucky, as by the time the relays came around the knee pain had eased off again and I was able to race without any trouble on that score.
I feel that I had a fairly strong run, and considering the strength of the field, I was happy to come away from leg one with a tenth place finish. Mine was one of four long legs, which was a distance of approximately 5.9 miles. The course threw up some challenges with quite a few tight bends, twists and turns and the odd lump and bump too, but being on the first leg ensured that I had plenty of company and competition to drag me around. I finished with a time of 29:54.
Team Wesham had a good turnout and managed to field two complete men's teams, as well as two women's teams too, and everybody performed really well - so much so that we managed to beat local rivals Blackpool and Lytham - well done boys!
On Sunday morning I did my long run with Luke Minns of Blackpool (yes he got reminded of our scalp!) and we took it fairly easy with it being the day after racing and stuck to 6:30 pace to round off a solid week.
Total mileage for the week: 76
Average pace for the week (m/pm): 6:36
Total mileage so far this month (March): 250
Total mileage for 2017: 816
Average miles per day 2017: 9.60
