A week for personal bests!

Well, it's the end of the racing season and I've just completed the Glasgow Half Marathon on its new course. Not every day you can say you were 50m behind Haile Gebrselassie in a race. Admittedly that was before the gun had started things off, but I'm not splitting hairs.

I managed to get round in a new personal best of 1 hour 42 mins and 49 seconds, over 5 minutes faster than I managed last year. I'm going to put this down to my Chi running technique rather than my fitness as I'd not really trained for this particular race. The investment in Nick's course(s) have been well worth it - not only am I running more freely, I'm running faster and with no injury worries… It seems you really can teach an old dog new tricks!

I've also been taking part in a study at The University of The West Of Scotland looking at nitrates and UV and how they effect the body's energy efficiency. Must be working because I've managed to slash my 10 mile time trail on the Watt bikes from 25:33 to 23:53. You can see from the second section of heart rate trace below that I'm working at my absolute maximum for the entire time!

When the October week starts my training will start in earnest again for The Outlaw next year.

I'm going to focus on my bike fitness for the next 10 weeks, following The Sufferfest bike plan and videos and then start the base level training once more.

So watch out for more regular updates (as per last year) as I focus in on the new goal :-)

Good luck with whatever goals and challenges you have set for the year ahead!