Just keep on pushing hard boy

First off, Congrats to the Guelph Gryphons for their “double double” at CI’s this past weekend.  Dave Scott-Thomas did it again, both the Women’s and Men’s team won the National title (for the second year in a row, hence the “double double”). In the past 10 years the Men’s team has finished no worse than second at CI’s and has won 6 titles, not a bad record.

I just finished up another high mileage week yesterday.  For the next couple of weeks I’ll bring it down a bit to feel, somewhat, fresh for my two races.  I’ll bring it down to the 145km/week range and then even lower for the final week.  We did mile reapeats last thursday on a XC type loop and they went well considering it was only my second interval workout in the past 2 months.  This whole nap thing hasn’t gone as planned, I got two naps in last week and zero the week before.  

The Manchester race looks like it is shaping up to be quite competitive again, they have two Ethiopians (one 7:38 and one 13:07) plus Alistair Cragg, Ian Dobson, Andrew Letherby, Mark Carroll and they always have a bunch more good americans and a couple of Kenyans.  This year I plan to race smarter and pace myself properly up the mile-long hill.  It’s one of those courses where racing on it previously gives you a decent advantage over rookies because of the massive hill, there’s really no other race like it that I’ve done.  www.manchesterroadrace.com

Once Nationals are over I plan to take a week off before embarking on a long season.  This will likely include a couple of indoor races, (to keep training interesting), and perhaps a road race while still doing base training.  Then in April I will hit the track and try to get the A standard for the 10 000m.  My buildup will include a 4 week altitude training camp in Flagstaff and maybe a few weeks in Tallahassee or Auburn (we’re working on accomodations) to get out of the winter.