Brinsley runner

A nice offer to run in the snowy hills was good fun. Early Sunday morning and three of us are heading to Edale. A busy place at 11 o'clock but when we arrived at 7.30 their was only one other car in the car park. A quick change of footwear and a check we had everything and we were heading along the Pennine way for a short distance befor heading up Grindsbrook a steady accent heading firstly over frozen ground and then further up, ice then snow. At the top a left turn and were heading down through the powdery snow line like kids. Heading down into Crowden Clough, the last Part of this downhill I had all on keeping the legs turning over quicker than I was coming down. Couldn't apply the brakes on the snow then it turned to mud and heather. The climb this time wasn't so server,v or my legs had now woken up, I'm not quite sure. Top of Crowden we had another set of great views, although further west it looked as though it wanted to drop more snow. We headed due ...

I actually enjoy hill reps, strange it may seem but I do feel that I improve more doing them than I seem to with speed work, it's not scientifically proven but it's how I feel after I've been regularly training. Hills are as such my best friend in a race as its where I tend to over take people, mainly on the ascent as its the stronger of the two disaplines. When I'm over taken I tend to find its on the fiat and sprint finishes, on the flat I seem to get to a reasonable speed but never seem to gave it in me to hold that speed. When I'm entering a finish I've already put everything into it so people will fly by and I think you should have pushed harder earlier if you've got that much energy. Back to the hill reps I did. These were two lots of five over two different gradients but both on boggy wet grass. The first five were quick up slow steady run down, the second set was the reverse and I actually find this harder as trying to let your legs go but with s...

A drive over to Heage to meet a friend for a run, weather forecast couldn't have been more wrong. Yesterday it said we could get sleet showers, this morning no sleet, it would be dry rain in the afternoon, like I said they couldn't be more wrong . It actually snowed all morning and now it's sleeting. I've got to the point where you really can't trust the forecast. However it did make for a great run, a few people out enjoying the snow on bikes and walking their dogs, for us this was a couple of hours run heading from Heage over to the back of Belper before heading on to Milford and on to the Chevins. I'd never been on this particular route or in fact area. I can image it has good views in the summer, but all we could see were snow flakes, not a bad thing. Heading along the Chevin was nice after the long climb up, before heading down to the opposite side of Belper by the side of the River Derwent. I knew some of this route as it was part of the Belper Ri...

Its the start if the weekend, and that finish from work for a few days, and every now and then I'll catch the bus to work and run home.Firstly it's time productive as I'd otherwise travel home then go out. Secondly I'm traveling on tired legs from standing up all day so I have yo work that but harder. Thirdly I can't cut the run short as it men's I won't get home. Fourthly I don't get home and think I can't be bothered or its raining I'll wait then not go at all. So running away from work is actually a good productive use of my time. Sets me up for the weekend. It helps that I can travel along either the Erewash or Nottingham canals or head totally of rd.  Tonight's route was along the Nottingham canal, it's disused and some parts are now filled in, but even in the twilight I could pick out the Old Bennerly viaduct that the trains passed over, and the more recent instlation of Winston the wind turbine. the bennerly vi...

Tonight's run was the first of the year for me, motivation has been low and feeling tired a lot to, but tonight I felt like getting out. Firstly it was a sloshing and glooping field trek out of the village. It's a long while since I've been out in conditions like that underfoot, after the first two fields my feet were numb and my hat had to be put on to protect my tabs. This was going to be a fun run. After three more fields where the water was running down like streams I crossed the road section to enter the downhill fields, sliding to a stop to go through the gates it was actually harder to stay upright going down than going uphill. By this time I suspected the river Erewash was going to be high, it was,  the bridge was covered, possibly passable but one side of the rail was lost so I wasn't going to risk it. Also I wasn't sure that the bridge I needed to cross over further down wouldn't also be under water. Closure notice and the bridge covered with...

   Chris out in front This morning I had a run out with a couple of friends from Ladybower res. We were expecting some snow on the ground, but found a fair bit more than we thought we would. We were prepared with enough kit to do The spine race,  well one of us was and he's off do the MRT challenger event. Good look to Chris on that one. Today's run was a lot more sedate and shorter only about 8 miles and 600 m of climbing, tough in the snowy heather we made our way through, and tough enough that we wasn't going to be cold. Only saw two other people on the tops, pristine snow otherwise, it was powdery and not much ice around so great running conditions, and no need for the yak tracks either. Forgot my camera so these shots are from Simons , later on we actually had blue sky and great views of the surrounding area. Amazingly the valley below was still green when we looked into it, yet there was snowdrifts in places on the top. Me wrapped up following S...

Although I call it The Club, it's more an informal group meeting of tri-athletes and runners from the area and from a number of the local running clubs, and to be honest it's everything you could want, Steve who organises these is very good at putting a training session on that uses the local lumpy sections for hill work while also finding safe areas to run when doing speed sessions. These sessions definitely get the best out of a mixture of abilities within the group. We met at a local grass track last night as the paths have been slippy recently. It was warmer than expected with the grass soft in some places but still hard with frost in others, we set about a 1600 m warm up before doing 3 sets of 16 X 100m quick paced running. A hard session, although I was once told and I definately agree with this, "any session is only as hard as you make it" , saying that it helps when your working with/ against fellow runners. It's a hard thing to push yourself aga...