The start of Mudfest

This week has been fun a week so far and it is just going to get better.

On Monday I was off so headed down to Tinto as I have just entered the Tinto Hill race in mid November.  I did this last year and had a really bad descent so I wanted to get some practice. So I power walked up it in 40 minutes with no running. Then just tried to relax as much as possible going down. I managed to take 3 minutes off my descent from last years actual race! I think it was a mixture of having proper fell running shoes giving loads of grip instead of the trail shoes I wore last year and also not thinking about it as much. So I was up and down in 57 minutes which was 5 minutes off last years time in a training run. So I'm thinking a Sub 50 minute run will hopefully be on this year. Even better thing about today though was that I actually got amazing views from the top as the last 2 times I was up there it was really cloudy.

Tuesday I was off again but had appointments during the day. I was sore from yesterday but from previous experience I can do flat sessions after a hilly session. So I went up to the track and did 12 times 400 metre reps with the club. This is one tough session! I was averaging about 1.28 for each rep peaking at 1.25 which is a time I have never ran faster than for a 400 and 1.32 was my slowest rep. So a good effort and again our group was extremely close together.

Wednesday I had a day off to recover from the previous 2 days. Then Thursday I was up at the club for long/gradual hill reps up Davieland Road. Again I started off with the B group and quickly realised they were going at a pace I wasn't going to be able to sustain. So somehow a group of 4 of us - Stephen, Jacqui and Hugh, formed a kind of bridge group between B and C. We were pushing each other along like Tuesday and had a really good session.

Friday I did an extended loop of Gogarburn with Alex which was probably about 3 miles and we found some more great trails round the building.

Then today I cycled down to Roukenglen for the West District Cross Country Relays which Giffnock were hosting. So I was down helping out with marshaling.  It was good fun and was amazing seeing all the fast runners. Its a 2k loop which the seniors do twice each. 3 women in a team and 4 gents in a team. The field gets so spread out that guys who would run 20 mins for a 5k look almost average. Where in fact if they were running bigger races you would see that they are in fact the best in Scotland.

Looking forward to tomorrow, as its the Mugdock trail race. I should easily beat my course best as I did it in 2 hours 3 minutes last year and that was taking it easy as I did 12 miles of the WHW afterwards. This year I'll just have a small warm down afterwards!

After that its more cross countrys which although won't be quite as muddy as tomorrow, will still be good fun!