Month Salvaged.....

Considering how November started out I'm chuffed that it has been salvaged by some great sessions over the past week! Best of all was this weekend, friday morning started with a great swim - breaking my 400 pb with a 6.02 - there were still some poor turns in there so sub 6 is real possibility any time soon!

Anyway Saturday was a run day - nothing really planned other than somewhere between 9 and 13 miles! I'll let you in to a secret...I love running in snow/ice and the cold! Its stunning to look at, fun to slide in and is usually quiet in the hills! so I drove out of town to do some running in my favourite area around Whitsbury Gallops!

The snow wasn't as plentiful as at home but about 1-2cm on the tracks and it was mostly virgin snow!

This was the view from the car - basically I run around the dips and hills in that view


Back where I had come from....


up to where I was going: -

about 5 miles in and looking back to where I had come from on the only bit of tarmac, a fair bit of melting in 45 mins! : -

So 10 miles on the nose in 1.27.47 which I was pretty pleased with as the first 5.5 I had cruised before really pushing it for the last 2 miles! Gives me confidence that I can push it over the longer distances without any dramas!

Sunday I joined with a friend and we went to the forest to take the mountain bikes for a spin and then in to a run! It was -3 per the car and felt so much colder for the first mile or so into the wind depsite wearing every single piece of cycling clothing I own! We totalled 15.5 miles in roughly 1 hr 45 - not fast but it was a properly tough ride - a few miles of gravel tracks interspersed with sand, gravel and icy boggy puddles! By my reckoning MTB'ing is about 2.5/3 times harder than road cycling so I'm happy with that distance for a mid-winter ride! (Open to discussion but I mean proper mtb'ing - off road and more than just gravel tracks!)!

We then went (almost) straight in to a 4 mile run, back over the same sort of ground as the ride - started off well but the legs felt it on the last couple of hills - still maintained a 9.30 pace without any great trouble! Then back home for some food and warmth!

View out the back of the house on Sat morning at the snow....

So all in all a good weekends training - especially on the running front, feel fine today so there was no great intensity - perfect for this time of year....must avoid getting ill now!! Exam and one more game of rugby to go and then its a straight line to June - can't wait!!