Happy New Year to one and all. It was a manic New Year for us with Christmas in Aberdeen, Boxing Day in Newcastle, wedding in Cheltenham and New Year in Maidenhead….then flying back up to make the first race of the year at Lumphanan detox. Lots of time in the car but lots of time to think abut the upcoming year.
So far #project345 has been going well but I had highlighted the week of Christmas and the following two weeks as a pivotal time to keep the training up and the mileage reasonable. With works nights out, travel and indulgence its easy to let it slide. It was important to have a race at this period to give a marker for where I was. The past three weeks there has been a lot of long slow, icy, slippy and not confidence boosting miles.
The Christmas period saw runs in Stonehouse, Maidenhead, Ponteland and locally at Dyce. All were very enjoyable for different reasons, but it was great to get a little run tourism done. ( Even if my brother in law caused a pile up at the start of the park run falling on the first corner ).
The Lumphanan race is billed as the first 10km in Scotland of the New Year and the numbers were well into the 300-400 number which is a great turnout to support the local charities. We arrived in good time and registered, received our t-shirts and the new rebel running shirt. My logo on the back reads “prove them wrong” and thats certainly my mantra for the season….but mainly prove myself wrong that the elusive 345 is achievable.
We got to the start line and lined up, before we knew it we were off and the start of the race is a gradual climb before a 2km section which is a more substantial climb. I over layered, base layer, t-shirt and gloves….I definitely regretted his after 10mins running. I had set out to go 43-44mins and knew i had to keep below 5min/km pace which the first two km were both over 5min/km so I knew I had a lot of work to do over the course.
The next part of the run was a good down hill section where time was easily clawed back but the ice on the roads meant cautious descent to 5km/6km mark where we headed offload to a farmers path. This really slowed me as the ground was icy and very uneven but firm, and a lot of other runners struggled in this two km section. Exiting this section led again to a downhill section into the village where I was able to keep pace with a few other runners most of the way around and even managed an increased paced last km to finish in 44:43 which I was happy with considering the hill and also the icy roads which maybe added 90s to the run.
All in all a great start to the new year and a well organised run which I would recommend looking up for next year. Thanks to all the organisers and to Rebel PT and Metro Running Club for the encouraging shouts throughout the run.
I now head to Tenerife for the next two weeks on a swimming camp but hope to keep the mileage high as much as possible.
Thanks for reading
Run Long and Prosper
James
