2013 looms

It has been a positive Christmas in the Carthorse camp.  News of a new sponsorship deal to rival Sarah Mac’s Inavo Eight contract came in just day’s before the holiday, in the form a text message from Mother, who offered cooked meals all Christmas in exchange for keeping my bedroom tidy and my bed made. 

Seemingly spitefully however, my fell shoes by the afore mentioned manufacturer had other ideas, slicing a layer of skin clean off the back of my heel on day two of the holiday.  Ten days have now passed and this latest injury now resembles a gouge out of my foot, making requests by Malcolm to make the 10 minute limp to the postbox cause for anquish.

Meanwhile I am fully prepared for this weekend’s Warwickshire County Champs (XC), despite my girly injury scare, and fresh from record 341 man-minutes of labour to remove the spikes from the footwear from last time out. 

In other news, tales of my double-December PBs has clearly spread, with fan tribute video[s] now starting to emerge on the internet.  Teenage running sensation Emilia Gorecka used the term “fantastic” on her website while Steven Bayton replacement training partner Dan Robinson has not been seen since it went viral.

UKA stirrup more trouble

The Carter family are said to be disappointed after finally getting around to checking the list of new lottery funded athletes last night, only to discover second-born Timothy has not been given lottery support for his jogging.

Timothy, who is currently in the bath, has declined the opportunity to comment, but in an interview with his parents (who play the National Lottery with limited success every week), it became apparent that they have very limited knowledge of athletics.  “I read that there was a level of funding that applied to contenders for Rio 2016, and I’ve been telling my friends at swimming that I know what Rio is,” said his mother while separating Timothy’s whites from colours.  “For [UKA] to say that Timothy has no chance of making it is just like school P.E all over again when he was only given an effort grade of ‘C’.”

Timothy, who this week has been working on wearing longer shorts in training, is rumoured to have filled out an entry form and stamped-addressed-envelope for a 10k later this year, after deliberating between this and the fun run option which incentivised a free Santa hat.  It has also been suggested that he may be tempted to do another Park Run if he feels like it at some point, although the idea that he still knows where his bar code is quite a far-fetched.

The only silver lining in all this is that Mark Lewis Francis has been dropped from funding.  The athlete is rumoured to have been sent to the Inflator Room at Theme Hospital.

Its all just numbers, right?

5000m PB : 16:29.9

5k SB (post-Sept 2011) : 17:36 (Park Run)

Today marked a personal milestone for myself, which was then completely overshadowed by the magnificent Steven Bayton, who ran 31:28 for 5k.  Or maybe 10k, I don’t recall.  Let’s do him first.  A runner who 18 months ago, every other session I huffed and puffed over the line ahead of his elegant stride, regardless of whether he’d moderately slowed to clear rogue footballs a mile in the air to teach those public users in Weston Park that this wasn’t an area of green to enjoy oneself in.

Steve’s rise to fame and moderate success has been well documented on this blog, but just how good is he?  Well to put it into perspective, today, by coincidence he’ll have me believe, he ran 2 back-to-back 5Ks both one second faster than my goal for the year.  Is that a coincidence?  Yes, indeed I also thought there might have been a malicious undertone to it as well.  Revenge perhaps because he could never beat me up the final hill in Hillsborough park on those cold winter evenings.

Let’s put this another way.  Steve is now over 2 and a half minutes faster over 10k than my best ever time, ignoring my current obese state.  Phenomenal.  Steve is a great athlete, and he trains hard, but for him to run those times just makes it all seem so easy.  So perhaps it is easy.  I’m certainly inspired.  I need to up my game.  Drastically.  Surely it can’t be that hard to run 33 or even 32, if a guy I was once even with has bettered that.

Which brings me to me, and my achievements (sorry to keep you waiting).  Today marked the culmination of the 2^nd hard week in my first microcycle of training.  As you probably inferred, because why wouldn’t you, I have 6 of those tiny cycles in the next 5 and a half months.  So why all the hype?  Why even bother blogging?  I ask myself the same thing.  Because today meant that I hit 65.7, and that 0.7 is very important because it rounds it up, miles for the week.  That’s my first post-injury week over the 60 mile milestone, and my highest mileage week in 6 months.  Which isn’t bad.  I don’t think I can call myself injured anymore, I now just have to settle for the terms ‘unfit’ or ‘useless at racing’ instead.  For those wondering how I did it, it’s all very clever I assure you.  Every footstep is planned, every breath calculated.  And hopefully by new year I should have some semblance of fitness again ready to hit some PBs myself.  Because the bar has just been raised further.

With a week in the Derbyshire countryside coming up, and a 24 hour hotline to my chief personal motivator Nick ‘Nandos’ Howard, and chief de-motivator Ally ‘The Beast’ Canahow, mother’s home cooking, and a cake I just baked which may or may not be edible, I now have all the tools to stop talking about what I’m going to do, and just do it.

Finally, it has been brought to my attention that there are other pb’s today, and as such I’m led to believe that there will be a new house lead on the cupboard when I return home next week.  I think it might have been a tennis ball which rolled off the counter to hop, skip and bop its way to a triple jump record.

Tough Times

It’s been a difficult Christmas for Steve Bayton, aged 12.  Fresh from - apparently - underperforming in the Percy Pud 10K, in a disappointing personal best of 32:17, he spent the rest of his day’s energy trying to save his obnoxiously over-sized trophy from being smashed into its inherent materials and recycled in the corresponding containers as Tesco’s recycling plant. 

Bayton’s misery was compounded by visiting his new coach and receiving the news that his potential is being limited by tight hamstrings, poor flexibility in his right quad, weak glutes and hip flexors, and that his thoracic pillar strength needs improving, possibly more on right.  I mean what worse way to hit a man than in his right-thoracic pillar strength.  Ouch. 

The man now also has some serious continuity problems, with none of his other times lining up with this new one.  His 3k pb is only 3 seconds faster than his 3k split in this race, his 5k is slower, and since McMillian’s time prediction are essentially PBs themselves, his 76 minute half just doesn’t live up to the 2h30 marathon he presumably entered in his notebook.

What’s more, I have asked my mother to rescind Steve’s open invitation to my house, without which he will struggle to win next years Burton 10K Classic in my own backyard.

There is however, an air of optimism about the ginger Huddersfield community (no offense to anyone) where he resides.  Rumour has it that he completed 14 unassisted press ups within this last week, which is only 1 shy of his lifetime best. 

Come rain or shine though, I believe that Mister Bayton will line up on the starting line at BUCS, with rumour suggesting that Danny Brewer will be relegated to the ‘B-race’ this year, to avoid Steve being manhandled again whilst spectating and humouring the lower calibre of runners.