Rosedawn Ramblings

Today's blogpost is brought to you by letters M, P and W and the number 4. The Letter W At the start of 2013, I started racing for the first time in the North Staffs Road Runners and was allocated to Group W. At the time, I really didn’t really understand the implications of wearing that W on my back in every NSRRA event. It essentially just meant I needed to take extra safety pins to each race. However, after the Alsager 5, the importance of the W became clear… it was about competition, about winning and about rivalry.  From then on, W-spotting became as much a part of my race strategy as pace, refuelling and clothing choices. Friends and family who came along to support me started W-spotting too, providing me with instant updates on my race position. It definitely brought out my inner competitive streak; after my race win in Alsager (first W), I realised I enjoyed winning and wanted to keep on winning, so I kept on racing.  There were ups and downs, highs and...

The Central Lancashire Half, starting and finishing in the small village of Lea just outside Preston, took place on a very cold and windy on the first Sunday of 2014. No time for New Year hangovers - my racing year has begun. This was my first chance to tackle one of my running goals for 201 4 - a sub 1:50 half marathon. And if I could achieve it, I'd obviously need to revisit my goals! Most of the route was on narrow country lanes and the scenery on a cold grey morning didn't offer up much inspiration. There were hardly any spectators and the runners seemed to be very spaced out, so no helpful clusters of runners to encourage each other along either. To achieve my sub 1:50 goal, I needed to run an average mile pace of approximately 8:24 over 13.1 miles. So this was definitely going to be a solo effort - a battle of wills with myself to see if I could keep going at the required pace. In order to keep going on a run like this one, I need to find lots of things to distract m...