Lloyd Biddell

Over the last few weeks I haven't been happy with a number of things in general, and now wonder whether perhaps its time for a change in direction. For a while now I've felt that my blog has just been treading water as of late and is coming towards the end of its natural life cycle. In essence the majority of my posts have been repeating the same thing time and again and I suspect its as boring to read as I find it to type. The last 16 months or so have been a big journey and I never thought for a minute I would have improved to the level I have from a starting point of nil, eventually culminating in a 2.53 marathon. Although I started my blog in December 2006, I never knew at the time that the MdS would soon become my focus. To begin with my only reason for training was with the MdS in mind, with every event used as progression towards the big one in March 2009. However as time passes my fitness level has far exceeded my wildest expectations resulting in the MdS goal becoming

Yesterday I did my 10k route but kept off the gas going round at a fairly easy 6.50 min mile pace, in case I wanted to do the race the following day. In the end I did decide to do the race today, mainly because I felt that a run at race pace would make up for the lost mileage earlier in the week more than a long distance training run would. As the race was in Sutton Park it was only a 10 minute drive away. I have done the race once before, probably about 12 years ago as a junior although the start back then was in a slightly different place. The course is a multi terrain race, starting on the roads before sections of mud, grass, gravel and stony paths. Its supposed to be about 10k, but I don't know how accurate the distance is. It was thankfully dry throughout with bursts of sunshine making it a bit humid at times. At the start we had the usual loons going off like a headless chicken and in fact the pace was surprisingly quick. I had aimed to do a slowish start and come through as

Another week of immense frustration after the high of last weekend. During the 10k my legs felt pretty good and tactically I had about as good a run as possible. Perhaps what was equally positive was that I came away without any sign of injury. I took Monday off because of the race the day before and didn't want to aggravate anything. Tuesday was going to be another nil return as I had my first sports massage. It was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting, although occasionally uncomfortable. The chap doing the massage who incidentally was a 2.28 marathon runner in his prime reckoned that my tight calf's are just a symptom of high mileage and nothing to be massively concerned about. Hopefully a few sessions will keep things in check. On Wednesday I was out for the evening so that day was another write off which was followed by my stomach feeling out of sorts the next day. Finally I managed to go out for a run on Friday. Due to all of the rest my legs were bursting with energy,

I decided to give the Leamington Regency 10k a go in the end, even with my current injury problems. I did do the race last year so in theory it's my first direct comparison I've got on the road between this year and last. The course is not the quickest out there as early on it goes off road around a golf course, before hitting the roads around Leamington but with some very sharp hairpin bends. As a result I did 37.08 last year (my pb is 35.54 which was set a few weeks later). Anyway, I woke up at 6.45am to find a blanket of snow outside, clearing it off the car showed that there must have been 3-4 inches, although the road surfaces were a bit better. I had wondered whether the race would be on today, but decided to go anyway. On the whole I had to drive a lot slower to get there but thankfully I had allowed plenty of time. As I was on the M42 doing 70 mph I went past a SPECS camera and I thought, that's a bit strange you only see them at roadworks normally, before realising

Sorry I haven't posted to my blog recently, unfortunately silence usually means injury and this is no exception. Whenever this happens I tend to feel in the doldrums and don't want to post anything... What would be the week before last I started off on Tuesday with my usual 10k blast. I absolutely demolished my 10.2k best time on that course and when I worked out the equivalent for exactly 10k I found I was only 6 seconds off my race pb in a time of 36 minutes exactly! I was absolutely flying! The following day I ran from work back to home (11.5 miles) and again in a new pb time, although this session I rarely push very hard. On Thursday I did another 10.2km this time in a more relaxing time of 42.23. The tightness of my calf's have been getting steadily worse since when I first posted about this a month or so ago. It got to the point of me calling someone who is a runner who specialises in sports massages to see whether he can sort them out. He reckons its nothing to be wo