Dirty Dotties and Hilly Billies

I've bitten the bullet and entered my first marathon. Chester on 09/10/11. Its the second running of the race and looks a good one with 6,000 runners and according to the reviews from last year, great support around the course taking in all of Chester`s landmarks, looking forward to it.

At the moment, I'm running 16 miles on a Sunday, the track on a Monday, about 8-9 miles on a Wednesday and Parkrun on a Saturday, with swimming and gym in between, I'm doing OK and should be in pretty good shape come next year.

Monday`s track session was excellent, 4 x 1 mile repeats. It was a freezing night but felt good (apart from the now usual tweak in my calf), I averaged a 7 minute mile apart from the last set which was my quickest at 6.55.

Sunday was my favourite run of the year so far, Hellrunner. Superb trail run over crazyass hills, falling down steep muddy banks, and the infamous bogs of doom. The pics below show just 5 pictures from it, the last showing where I fell over a branch flat on my face in the mud. The run itself was around 9 miles in total, but was so much fun, no garmin, no watch, just trail shoes, shorts, a vest and an appetite for mud. I travelled up with a mate from Harriers, Simon, who finished in 1 hour 25, I was 5 minutes behind in 1 hour 30, with plenty left in the tank, it wasn't a run where you could overtake people, due to the terrain, so I could have got closer to him, but, hey, who cares, it was fun fun fun, and that`s the important thing.

1. Jonny Mellor 00:58:28
2. Gavin Chatterton 00:58:58
280 Simon Hilton 01:25:01
403 John Richards 01:29:46
1772 Nicola Lewis 02:47:36

(DAD IF YOU ARE READING THIS, CLICK ON THE PICS WITH THE LEFT MOUSE BUTTON TO MAKE THEM BIGGER)