Cross prep building pace

          With a week to go to the start of my beloved Asics offroad series everything seems to be heading in the right direction. After a 1st, 2nd, 1st, and 2nd  in the Cross Duathlons in September and October my final phase of preparation has seen me mixing it up with some intense training and unusual races. Last weekend I competed in the Herts league 7k Orienteering and despite knowing the venue like the back of my hand and running like a loony between checkpoints I still only managed 4th place. These top orienteers are something else to behold. They're running as fast if not faster than me but reading a map and navigating at the same time where as I was virtually standing still reading the map and then legging it.  Still, when you consider that there were about 25 controls there is no way I would have run 25 intervals that hard on a Saturday morning so it's more wood on the fire which is good. The next day I decided to take to my mountain bike for the fast Sunday ride from St Albans and boy did I pay for it. Thanks boys! ;-)
            This weekend followed a similar structure with an 8k cross country race yesterday and then the same group ride today. The cross country was incredibly hard (which was nice) and for the group ride today I opted for the road bike and some payback for all the pain they put me through last week. How very dare they! It's Sunday afternoon now and as always it's following a familiar Espresso fuelled structure : once I've finished writing this I'll be tapping away finishing off this week's training programmes as I look after the Cox stable of ever improving athletes. As always I enjoy reading the texts and emails of how people have done in any scheduled races this morning and this week it was great to read that Carl Ferri is back with a bang winning the Hillingdon duathlon having been unable to race Du all season with calf issues. He's had fun becoming a road racer under my tutelage and now it's great to see him back in the king of sports and a win is always a great boost. Well done Carl.