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Half the distance, half the glory?
 

Hills, marathons and autumn training
 The picture above may be my legs, but my first cross country race of this season didn't so much as skirt around a tiny patch of mud. In fact it was almost unnerving: 18 degrees, bright sunshine and running wearing shades? Most peculiar. Mind you, Richmond Park - a frequent venue on the Surrey circuit - is rarely a mudfest. Must be all the deer sweeping up beforehand to make it tidy for us.

So while my weekend's racing was short (see last week's post - a mere 6k for us feeble women) I spent a decent chunk of Sunday stalking Strava for marathon results, mostly from Abingdon and Amsterdam. Some stellar performances, including another sub-3 and second lady at Abingdon for Melissah, who I think has now run more sub 3s than I've had hot dinners this year (if you think that's an exaggeration, bear in mind I didn't have a kitchen for three months ...) and an amazing post-natal return of 3hr 04min for Gill (longest run in training 19 miles..) Finally, check out this ma…

 

Kudos and The Running Channel
 So much running this weekend I don't know where to begin. Well, firstly with the disclaimer that none of it was mine (none of the impressive kind, anyway). There were marathons in Bournemouth, Chester and Chicago, halves in Kingston and Cardiff - and that's just the ones I had friends taking part in. Mo Farah will no doubt have got a massive cheque for his efforts, so my particular kudos goes to Tracy Barlow for once again being top British lady at the Cardiff half, to Melissah Gibson for smashing her PB in Chester with an awesome 2 hrs 51mins, and to Sarah Dudgeon who didn't have the race she probably wanted but gritted her teeth and did it anyway in Chicago - to be honest, those kinds of races are the ones that you really deserve the praise for. I very much liked this Tweet from Alexi Pappas (if you don't know who she is, look her up - she rocks) which summarises her own debut nicely.

I've realised that means women get all the kudos this week. Chaps, I'm su…

Who needs Monday mornings anyway?
 Now, the problem with this freelance lark is that you lose track of days. Well, turns out I do, anyway.  Is it Monday? I hadn’t noticed. Etc. So apologies for both lateness and brevity of this post.

In truth my weekend running was nothing to write home (or blog) about. Still recovering from this nasty sinusitis that seems to have infected my whole family, I did more pootling than running. However, it did include my clubs fantastic inaugural quarter marathon trail race - a glorious loop of Wimbledon Common. It was an unusual and thoroughly enjoyable experience to truly take a race easy and just have fun, including halfway high fives from my kids (aka medal-giving marshals) and also to catch up with Gill - BTL regular, friend and all-round superstar runner - who also was second lady in the race. Actually, I had a bit of a dilemma when I saw her and my friend and co-captain Julia neck and neck in the lead on the way round - I wanted both of them to win!

Then on Sunday, it was time for th…