Back to work, back to the canal...

First day back after the Christmas break saw more ferociously low temperatures overnight, but after a lengthy defrost (thank goodness for heated windscreens!) I slithered off our road and onto something with grit on, collected The Herb and drove off to reacquaint myself with the world of banking.

Very quiet day in the diary today, so after a morning of catching up with emails Rich (with his poorly leg) and I set off out into the cold to run.  After my big week I wanted a very steady session today, as did Rich who by contrast had done very little over the break.

In the end we did our standard 5 miler towards Riddlesden and back, chatting all the way at an average pace of 8min miles, with the last 2 at about 7:45.  The canal bank was snow covered but not slippy apart from a couple of patches, but my Salomon trail shoes gave me plenty of confidence.

Musing on yesterday's run I spent a bit of time today "advertising" my Friday afternoon long runs - doing them with company's so much easier.  I also had some time debating the merits or otherwise of racing, particularly a 20m race, during marathon build up.  I'd always assumed it was a good thing to do, but some of my RW chums, many of whom have run sub-3, feel that you wouldn't recover from a full-on 20m race and be able to continue training properly.  I'm still doing the Trimpell 20 (which I now find is a week earlier on 14/3) but may treat it as a progressive long run and only run the second half hard.  But I bet I don't...