Dunnbelievable.

    April 2010 - After a winter of hard training with the aim of beating my best marathon time of 2 hours 26 minutes and with some good pre-marathon race results as in a sub 32 minute 10k and a sub 70 minute half marathon I felt I was ready for the Edinburgh marathon. I felt that I would not be in better shape again in 2010 so I decided to do some time trials so that I would have some data that I could always refer back to. The time trial come test run would need to be local, undulating and of an approximate distance so that I couldn't cross reference it to anything other than like for like. So in April 2010 I found my self some routes and mashed out some times. Unfortunately the plan went pair shaped as I suffered a bad ankle injury in the following winter as I trained for the 2011 London Marathon. Through out 2011 I struggled with my ankle injury and other related problems, my training was next to nothing and I battled through races getting slower and slower and getting more demoralised which resulted in me calling it a day with running life. In 2012 I made a bit of a return but it was more of a forced return, my heart and soul wasn't in it and my only performance was so poor compared to my past results  I once again retired from racing.
  I often looked at my time trial test runs that I set in 2010 and particular a very easy one for me to do was on my way to work between two check points. In 2011 my plan was to try and crack 12 minutes which I just about achieved by 1second, my time from 2010 was 11 minutes and 16 seconds. As time went by I questioned that time as it was way quicker than anything I had done before and certainly afterwards, so I surmised that there must of been a hurricane of a tail wind pushing me along. This year I have been on the attack on that test run, starting with a sub 12 minute time and then working my way down until I achieved 11 minutes 30 seconds. At this point I came to the conclusion that my 2010 time was in fact genuine, and I once again started to believe in myself. I run the full distance with no checkpoint timing and at maximum effort so that when I finish it always feels the same, totally exhaustion with no idea of what time I should expect. Yesterday I took on that test run once again and this time there was something different, I ran at maximum effort, no checkpoint timing so no difference there but I felt I was going fast and that hasn't happened for a very long time. 11 minutes 13 seconds, 2010 time taken down. What on earth do I make of that ? I don't think I am as good as in 2010 but I must be  better at the shorter distance of approximately two and a quarter miles.
   I still believe I can go quicker yet and will be continuing with my training and I will be looking forward to see if I can in fact crack 32 minutes for 10k.