"You look ill"

The old saying amongst us cyclists is that when your friends and relatives start saying that you look ill, peaky or like a hard labour camp victim, you are going well......

But there is a small difference between looking lean and fit, to looking slightly exhausted and anaemic with sunken eyes! I'm not sure where I sit at the moment, probably somewhere between the two thanks to (finally) a bout of the cold virus that almost everyone else i know has had over the past month or so.

Both Dan (Burgess) and I had busy weeks, working away for the bulk of it, searching in vain for decent hotel gyms to keep the training up on our travels. I eventually did find a gym in Braunschweig, Germany which although holding their weekly over 60's aerobic session, kindly let me join in amongst the bemused older folk who looked on as they walked briskly on thier treadmills to me doing all shapes trying to maintain marathon pace for 40 minutes!

Dan and I did manage to get out for a steady 5 during the week. Again in cycling, the term for someone going slightly better than their training partner is 'half-wheeling', and so Dan half wheeled me for a good portion of the session, leaning back to chat to me at 7 o'clock, or was i just trying to get him to crick his neck??

He certainly seems to be running at a nice pace and the moment, seemingly handling the runs with relative ease, despite a few missed sessions which we are both guilty of. Lets hope his form continues.

As for me, I'm struggling a tad. Dans pace is the pace we need to be at, but I'm not quite up to speed just yet, I'll put it down to the injury and the fact its week one of the heavier schedule. Yesterdays long run was a lovely 11 miler to Wallog and back with great views across Cardigan Bay, we meet at 10am at Plascrug and plan to again next week if anyone fancies coming along?

As we finished the run, which took about an hour and forty minutes, one of us said "Only 15 miles to go..!" maybe it was me actually, it was only a joke, a true one at that but we're hoping that all will be different on the day and the crowd will give us a few free miles with all the cheers and atmosphere.

Here's hoping.