Miles 35.1; Units 29

A late post, so my apologies.

A game of two halves, this week. It is perhaps the lot of the runner to experience highs and lows, most of which are caused by over enthusiasm and failing to listen to your body (or the sound advice of others). The start of the week was mostly about recovering from the Bramley 20 - in theory it is 1 day a mile for full recovery. There is a lot to be said for that - and yet marathon training must go on. I headed back out on Tuesday for an easy 25 mins, and a steady 50 on Thursday. Saturday then went very well with a 12-miler at a great pace - all feeling fine - and then on Sunday the most ragged, disjointed run in a long time, a sad, halting 14 miles. So, maybe that thing about 1 day per mile was not totally wrong, eh?

I've also come across a splendid podcast called Marathon Talk, which I can highly recommend. One of the two guys who make it is Liz Yelling's husband, Martin Yelling, and the other, Tom Williams, is a relatively recent running convert who is well under 3 hrs for the marathon. They are a bit chatty-blokey, which is actually quite appealing, and they know their stuff. Well worth an hour on your ipod for those long runs.

Wine of the week this week is a little pleasure - especially as it was a gift from a colleague at work, a small bottle of Peller Estates Riesling Icewine 2007, from Niagara in Canada. It was a lovely golden colour, and had a delightful nose of peaches, apricots and that zing you get with Riesling. On the palate it is sweet, intense and honeyed, with double-rich

marmalade fruit. Again, as it is Riesling, there is a great acidity to this wine that stops it being cloying - and as always with these wines, you are amazed that, when drunk with a sweet pudding (in this case a lovely treacle pudding yum yum) it tastes almost dry. Now that's balance! And just a quick thought for how this is made - crushing frozen grapes picked in the dead of night in January (provided you can keep the birds off the grapes!) when the fruit is shrivelled and the juice so concentrated. As you can imagine, the risk of production means that the quantities are tiny and the price high - but to be honest, at around £30 for a half, it really isn't that pricey.

It reminded me of a visit to the vineyards of Bernkastler Doctor some years ago, where we hiked up to the top of the vineyard on a slope that felt like a 1 in 1. With glass in hand, we reflected on the challenges here, when that call comes on a freezing January night "The grapes are ready", and how you would pick these grapes on frozen, death-defying slopes..crikey! Well worth the price, I should say.

Comments

miles 30.46; Bike miles 0; Units 27

A good running week. I planned for 4 runs, however only 3 resulted as the Saturday run fell to the combined demons of ice, cold and shopping (!). I thought I might be able to nip in a cheeky 3 or 4 miles after we had returned from the delights of the first batch of Christmas shopping (oh, and buying a new telly...so it was not all bad) but it was not to be. And a rather nice bottle of La Tour du Mons 2000 (Cru Bourgeois Margaux) called too.. This week, I managed a hill session in the cold on Wednesday, which did not tax me too much, a steady 7 on Friday, and then a challenging and hilly 18 on Sunday. This was a great run in the cold air - just splendid to be out there when it is so quiet and cold. Just really wonderful. The temperature hovered between -1 and +1, no snow in sight, and a bit of occasional ice. Just really good. I was reflecting as I ran on one significant change in my attitude since running - and that is my approach to artificial fibres. Before running, it had to be c

miles 21.08; Bike Miles 1; Units 20 excluding Saturday which was far too many!

"a happy weekend is one with more miles on my shoes than my car tyres" Another week of just two runs - but both good quality, including some tough hills. So I am not unhappy with that - would have been good to crack 30 miles this week, though! The Sunday run was out with the running club, as before from St Catherine's in Winchester. It was crisp, dry, and everything that makes a wintry run truly great. You do just feel absolutely alive after that. It also included a rather random piece of pathway that was covered in cows, which needed shooing off the path..slightly worrying. It was along the water meadows at St. Cross - always feels very medieval at that spot, as if you could be seeing a scene that a monk would have encountered 500 years ago. There is something about these old towns that embody and then exude the years of history. I have included a photo of these meadows at St. Cross because I find it truly enigmatic, evocative...and frankly all a bit Cadfael, if you reme

Miles 33.84; Units 27

Exercise-wise, a back end loaded week. I had to miss three training days through pressure of work. Sometimes that's not such a bad thing, as it gives you a chance to recover. All too often, we runners can run ourselves into the ground, if we are not careful. However, after two days you start to feel the lack of exercise, and imagine that you are ballooning up in weight. This of course is not true, though that is little comfort. This may also be a personal thing, however I usually find that when I take more than one day off, a number of niggles emerge - in this case a touch of plantar fasciitis (for you non-runners, a pain like a drawing pin being lodged in your heel - see the gloriously Heath-Robinson picture of the necessary stretching to help the recovery). Maybe the body is just seizing the day and bringing the bad stuff out that it has kept under check whilst you are exercising - clearly 3 days is enough for it to think "oh good, we seem to have stopped all this mad runn

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