It is said that people start to look like their pets. This has happened to me. I don't mean that I have become black, grown a coat and miraculously sprouted ears the length of my face. I mean that what I have been wearing for running over the past couple of (siberian) days has been ninja-esque. Black trainers, black leggings, black gillet and black long sleeve top. The bits of white detail on Georgie's harness worked very well with the white IMPERIAL across my clothing.
I alluded to the fact it has been cold. So cold that I have resorted to wearing leggings under my work trouser. I pity myself for getting so soft, I remember one year at school when I only wore a shirt for the entire winter just to show how hard I was.
But getting back to the puppy. Over the past couple of days I have realised that she has a huge capacity to train. Which means that I can probably run over an hour with her every day. You might think this would fit into marathon training perfectly. Sadly it doesn't. For any future marathons I do I want to be improving my time each race, which means doing higher quality training each cycle. At the moment that's impossible. At the moment the number of times I have to stop for the dog would - for example - stop me doing effective interval training. But "doing milage" isn't a problem.
So I'm thinking about doing an ultra-marathon. Simply put these are races that are longer than a marathon (26.2m, 42.1km) from 50km (31m) up to 100miles (160km) i.e. 4 marathons. The one I have my eye on is the North Downs Way 50 in August. I'll tell you more once I've decided. Have a look at www.centurionrunning.com
Also S, G and I are very much looking forward to moving back to London this weekend.
