Friday 24 February 2012

speed work, races and the BBC

Speed work today.  Lots of short reps ... well, ten anyway.  Not easy with a gale force wind blowing so that some reps were 20 seconds per mile (12.5s/km) faster than others but with less effort !!!

A good training session though and I hit my targets for AVERAGE pace which I'm pleased about in the conditions.  Also working hard on form as mentioned in the previous post.

I'm pleased that Pam Storey appears to have finally got her ultra races off the ground with the news that she's planning to stage a 48 hr and a 24 hr race in Horsham, near London in August.  I really would love to take part in the longer of the two but it is a bit close to this year's World 24 hr Championships - early September in Poland.

That's if I'm selected of course.  And therein lies the problem ... UK Athletics have not yet announced any selection criteria or guidelines.  Plenty of stuff for other international events but nothing for this when common sense dictates that the longer the race the more notice the athletes should have so they can plan the rest of their season.  Long races means long recovery.

Perhaps the powers that be have decided not to send a team to Katowiche.  Stranger things have happened ... but I just wish they would tell the athletes.

There's been a good article on the BBC website recently about sleep and how humans evolved to take sleep in four hour blocks and not eight hours at a time which most people believe.  Of course ultra runners - especially multi day runners - have always known that short periods of sleep are best.

Continuing with the BBC, an episode of Horizon next Tuesday may prove interesting.  It's entitled The Truth About Exercise.

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