Swimming and the Wind ... What a joke.

I have had a busy day today running 21 miles, doing some gym stuff and going for a swim, well if you can call it that! I am so bad at swimming its unreal, as I am out of breath after two lengths. The missus who can only run a couple of miles can do the same in the pool and not even be out of breath. I really don't get it, I'm thinking its because my technique is so bad but to be honest I don't care as I hate it. People say running is boring but seriously they would rather go into a pool, swallow loads of water and swim up and down the same 25m for half an hour? Jokers, Rather them than me, you just cant beat a good run even if the wind is gusting up to 50mph outside.

So, back to the running, I looked outside the window and from the looks of trees bending over double I decided a session of 1 mile, 2 mile, 3 mile, 2 mile, 1 mile was out of the question. Unless I ran with the wind for the entirety of the session and did a cool down of the same length back into the wind, I think I'll give that a miss then. In fact it reminded me of a few years back when I did a 10k on Mablethorpe promanade and the 5k back was all into a gale force wind, fun times.

I wasn't prepared to do any sort of run all on my own so I text Sam Mitchell, who was doing eight miles, and said I would jog out to his and attempt my 18 mile long run instead. The idea behind this is that I would then do a race on Sunday, a five mile local cross country, to make up for missing the session today. Anyway, the run was interesting to say the least and for the first time the wind actually was blowing me off my feet. Yes, I know that this should be expected when you way 9 stone wet through, but this is the first time that I actually couldn't run into the direction the wind was blowing. Decided to put the ipod on in the 10 miles I wasn't with Sam, listening to the latest installment from Marathon Talk to block out the noise of the wind. This week featured a Ron Hill interview, It is really inspiring to hear a guy who worked full time yet still produced some truly amazing results simply by putting in the graft, my sort of guy. Here are the details of the run:

9:52 AM: 2:03:31 (18.0mi, 6:52/mi) Mile splits were: 6:53, 6:46, 6:46, 7:20, 6:42, 6:43, 7:02, 7:05, 7:06, 7:13, 6:49, 6:54, 6:44, 6:56, 6:38, 6:40, 6:34, 6:32 - All this really shows is that when we had to run into the wind slightly we went above 7 minute mileing and when we came out of it we were too tired to do anything quicker!

Then this evening I decided to spend some quality time with Jenny by ... going down the gym. Only because I wanted to get another few miles done without going out in the wind and she agreed after I said we could get Chinese on the way back. I did three miles on the treadmill at 6:55/mi which felt nice and easy and allowed my legs to recover a bit. I definitely know I am coming back into some fitness as even after doing 21 miles today I feel pretty good and ready to race at the weekend, actually I'm really looking forward to it. Did some core exercises and 'stretched' while the missus did her 'routine' and then went for that ridiculous swim. I put stretched in quotation marks as for those who don't know me I am possibly the tightest athlete in the world. This was confirmed to me by an American physio stating that I had the tightest hamstrings in the US, after being repeatedly told by physios in England "They're the tightest things I have ever seen." This all means that my stretches, despite my effort, look quite ridiculous as I force my legs into positions that they really were not built to be pushed into. I wish I could become a bit more flexible and from reading Bryn's blog it seems he has had some success in this department, but I stretch twice a day and I really never see any improvements. The sauna was decent though and ate half a duck from the Chinese, great way to spend a Friday evening who says runners are no fun!