After 7 weeks of dropping down from 60-70 to just 20 miles a week due to nasty heel pain it was time to get back into the grind. My heel pain had been solved with Enertor Performance Insoles.. Yippee I can run properly again. It had been 7 weeks since my last proper speed session and the AB Training Group's warm weather training camp in Portugal was going to be the place to start training hard! We arrived in the evening on Saturday 13th May after some of the guys in the group

After a decent block of training and averaging 60 miles a week for the 16 week schedule it was soon enough race day. I I decided on a more structured marathon plan this time and used Pete Pfitzinger’s ‘Advanced Marathoning’ book as a guide for my 16 week schedule. I used the schedule from the book as more of a guide and more to look at the mileage and swapped the specified sessions to fit with what my running club (Arena 80) were doing on the track / hill sessions. I added a

So it's here, race day! Do I feel ready? No! but I knew it should be a decent training run, I just needed to run hard! I went out a bit too quick at the start, after a mile I realised I was in 3rd female position. After the turnaround point a few miles in, I was quite close to Sarah Hill who was in 2nd position, but as we turned, I knew it was the long stretch to Hove Lagoon with the wind against me. It wasn't pleasant at all, Sarah was getting further and further out of reac

I had been feeling unwell the previous week and had to take 3 days off – not ideal when marathon training! I was nervous as I always want to give races my all and I don’t like having an excuse. The weather looked horrible, wet and windy (as it often is on the seafront unfortunately!) but it’s race day and I need to use this half marathon to see where my fitness is at. Off we went with the wind behind at first, I knew because of this that the first mile would be a little bit q