It's working.

Early January this year my notes from treadmill running say that I completed 12 sets of running at 23km/h for 1 minute with 3 minutes recovery and that 1 minute 5 seconds might be possible next time but 1 minute 10 seconds would be impossible. But tonight I managed to succeed in completing 12 sets at 1 minute 10 seconds, so my training must be working. In track terms it would be like running 400 metres flat out in 60 seconds and then next time keep going at the same speed for another 66 metres.
Having read Running on empty's blog I thought I would reflect on where I was ten years ago and also five tears ago. In the early months of the year 2000 I had just started bike racing and took part in a road race at Oxenhope near Keighley, hilly the entry form said, hilly ! it was 72kms of nothing but hills, I also remember the map of the route which highlighted a section near the end of each lap known as the "impossible climb". On warming up the climb felt like a mole hill but during the race it became harder and harder until the final lap were it lived up to it's name and became almost impossible. I managed to finish 14th with nil points for my efforts. 5 years ago seems more like yesterday, Brass Monkey Half Marathon I finished in 9th place and was over the moon with my sub 74 minute time of 71 minutes 54 seconds, but even better was that I had my first ever running victory which was the White Horse Wander Fell Race.