Been a While!

Hi All :-)

Its been a while since I posted anything on here, not because I have been taking a break, but because my times been tied up with other things and training. I do however have a few updates but will try keep it short and snappy!

Charity Challenge - Great North Swim

I completed one of my challenge events at the start of this month. The one which I was least looking forward to - The Great North Swim. This is a 1 mile, open water swim in Lake Windermere, which I had done almost 0 training for. I am not a very keen swimmer and so the aim of the event was more so to just finish rather than going for a specific time.

Despite a rather slow start, a little bit of panicking and swallowing of water, after 600m of breast stroke, I managed to get into a rhythm of front crawl, thereby crusing into the finish is a respectable time of 31 minutes. Not the quickest, but certainly nowhere near the slowest either! The important things was that the event was complete, I had a good crack amoungst my work mates and I can now concentrate on my running! :-)

Got to love Saylies pout! ha-ha

Glad it's over and done with!

JNR Race for Life

I was asked to go and run with the children at the Junior Race for Life run, ran by Greengate Junior School in Barrow at the start of the month. How could I turn that down! It was great running and chatting with the kids, somewhat inspiring them to start running themselves! They did great and there was definitely some future talent in there! It was fantastic seeing the new track at Furness Acedemy being used for what it should be used for, developing the next generation of athletes! I just wish I had something like this at their age and then I may have started running earlier!

Greengate JNR School have also offered to hold a fund raising event in the autumn term too for Kidney Research UK which is fantastic! :-)

Deemon Dance Raffle

Emma Fawcett of Deemon Dance group in Barrow very kindly offered to hold a raffle with all cash collected going to Kidney Research UK at their show last week. A total of £106 was raised and will be added to my just-giving page! Thank you Emma! :)

Funding and Support

Active Cumbria have very kindly offered me a grant of £300 to contribute towards my training costs in 2015. This will be a great help is paying for petrol costs to attend training in Preston and race entry fees! :-) Thank you Active Cumbria!

Following the amazing support from the people of Barrow and further apart online, within the last couple of days, I have been contacted by Mars Milk Play fund, who have awarded me £300 as well to contribute further towards by training and race costs! :-) Thank you Mars Milk! :-)

Torque Nutrition have very kindly offered me support with discount prices on nutrition products to aid my atheletic life-style and recovery. Whats even better is that all the products taste great! and the gels have to be the nicest and easiest to stomach that I have tried! Thanks Torq!

Training and Racing Plans

Most importantly, my training is going well! I am now back into full training after a full weeks rest following Brathay Marathon and a recovery week of reduced miles. I have gradually tapered the mileage back up and will be back to 70 mile a week this week for my Great North Run training bulid-up. I dont plan on increasing that milage too much above this in the build up, as to try keep my legs free from injury, however will be focusing on the quality of training.

Training Log

I have started training in Preston with Helen Clitheroe and gang and are really enjoying it! The adjustment to training properly, doing tempo runs and speed work on the track, was a shock to the system at first however I think I can see benefits already! I cant wait to see how far I can come on in the build up to GNR! I have a long way to go, but hopefully I can keep chipping away at my times.

To be a bit smarter, I have had a bit of a change to my racing and training plan in the build-up to GNR. I have dropped chester marathon in October, since it doesn't seem beneficial in the long term for me to be doing another marathon this year and I have also dropped Hoad hill marathon and opted to run the half instead (just to support a new local race). I have also dropped Ulswater Triathlon in order to concentrate on my running. The important thing for me, for the rest of this year, is to develop some speed, concetrating on 5-10k distances up to half marathon max, and then take that speed into the new year build up to London Marathon 2016, while letting the legs recover properly from the silly first half of this year!

Currently my racing plans up to GNR include (subject to change):
27th June - Lancaster 5K
12th July - We Love Manchester 10K
25th July - Lancaster 5k
2nd August - Prudent Riverside 10 mile
9th August - Hoad Hill Half Marathon
7th September - Great North Run (Half Marathon)

Lets see how I get on!

Club!

This week I have finially signed for a UKA affiliated club. The mighty Salford Harriers! The standard of running at this club is very high, especially in the A team, so it gives me a good bunch of people to try and aim to eventually keep up with! They are all a damn sight better runner than I am currently, however hopefully in the future, I will be up there with some of them! They have some great relay teams (A and B team) to look forward to competing in next year and looks like they all have a good bit of friendly banter! You never know, fingers crossed, if I could improve on my marathon time enough, we could put some good team times in at London marathon next year too, to get Salford harriers up there in the team championship!

I am also looking at joing a more local club as 2nd claim, possibly Barrow & Furness Striders or Preston Harriers, to compete in the local x-country and maybe even a few track events! Watch this space!

- Grant