After last week's tough 20 I decided I needed a recovery on the Saturday, so set off into the teeth of the wind towards Halton East. I turned at 1.5m and ran home, as Lils has decided she'd better do a bit of running in preparation for the North Yorks XC finals in a couple of weeks. Bizarrely, Maisie also decided she wanted to come, so off we set, me and Lils in running kit, and Maisie in jodpurs, having just got back from nag bouncing. We did 2 miles, and Maisie was probably the stronger of the two of them, which is a turn up as she's usually too busy moaning about her legs to run. Still - 5m recovery to take the week to over 40 again.
Then Sunday it was a very worried andy from embsay who set off to pick up The Herb and drive to Otley for a (wait for it...) bike ride!!! The first of the year, and I was very nervous about crashing and burning horribly. My only hope was Dave Andrews from work, who's recently bought a road bike having done a fair bit of mountain biking. The full team was Dave and I plus Rick (now known as "Gramps), Angry, Gym-Bunny, Herb and another new boy, Rich Bright. Rich clearly has too much money as he turned up clad head to toe in posh clobber (including white overshoes) and riding about 4 grand's worth of bike. His nickname as "The Dandy" was decided before 10 miles were up...
Sadly, our hopes of "all the gear, no idea" were dashed as he spanked us on the way up to Leathley and Norwood. My best hope for not being last, Dave, decided to head off on his own, leaving me as potentially lantern rouge. As it happened as we headed up Norwood, my legs recalled Friday's efforts but also decided that as I've been doing a bit of running so I managed to hang onto The Dandy's wheel most of the way up. A blast along Pennypot Lane and through Clint, then down towards Pateley led us to the bottom of Peat Lane, the hideously steep (and currently muddy) lane parallel to the main road to Greenhow.
We came round the corner, having seen The Dandy disappear upwards to find him off his bike. He's cracked! Sadly not - he was just in the wrong gear and soon ground past Angry and I on the painfully steep straight section.
We blasted down to Blubberhouses and set off up the last climb of the day back to Otley. I somehow found myself in front on the last section, closely followed by Brighty - when suddenly he did actually conk out - I heard a sort of deflating sound and then I was alone - he'd had to stop for a breather! happy days - a fat bloke on a heavy bike with mudguards can eventually prevail over a whippet on some carbon.
40 miles in just over 3 hours, and my cycling mojo is back.
This week's been a couple of 5 milers with a hard session last night. Arranged to meet the Herb at Silsden after work, so I ran along the canal and did some 1km reps at about 3:50 per km (so c6:10 pace) off 400m recoveries - hard going into the wind. Managed 6 of them before I met Herb, then ran a nice steady 6 with him to give me just over 11 miles - a decent midweek session.
20 miler number 5 tomorrow - which in most marathon campaigns would be "it" - but I think I'll squeeze one more in before taper. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go out at 7:05 pace whch would give me a decent PB - if the next 2 weeks' training goes particularly well I might have a go at sub-3, but to be honest a comfortable PB would be just fine too.
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