Brought forward my Sunday run to Saturday as the BBC reckon it's going to snow. Which would mean no run... or the running machine again. Temp went below zero which is always dangerous for running... so I'm glad I did. 11.5/12 miles at 8 min a mile.

Fine but... running more than double that?? Ouch. If I add a mile a week I'll be at over 20 just in time. So next weekend will be a half marathon.

Warming up and down for running especially as it is cold is very important to avoid injury. My sister has sent me a guide for doing this correctly.

The guide was written by a fellow Chartered Physiotherapist - Sinead Murphy who works for top sports Physios based at the - The Locker Room, fitness centre in Cork Ireland. A must read for all runners.

The guide

Blog is global...

The Map below shows locations of people reading the blog... These include west and east coast USA, Ireland, France, London, Manchester and... Basingstoke.

Dots below show the locations...

Running machine - Well it's raining...

Rather than get wet I decided to run on the running machine instead.

I managed 11 miles that had to broken into 2 halves... as I discovered that the machines at my Gym cut out at 45mins...??? Even on marathon mode.

This sort of broke the Zen feeling I was starting to get by simultaneously running, listening to my MP3 and watching 3 channels of TV at the same time.

The cut out happened mid... Kylie, Dad's Army and Man U v Spurs. Amazingly Dad's Army was by far the most interesting... Spurs didn't put up much of fight... it seemed that they had decided that going out to Man Utd was no shame particularly as they League and Carling Cup to worry about. A real yawn...

Might have been a different story if they'd got a draw like West Ham with the monkey hangers.*
*Hartlepool famously voted their monkey football mascot as Mayor. The monkey mascot had a reputation as a hell raiser being thrown out of many grounds for poor behaviour but is now on to it's (his) second term as Mayor after a landslide second victory. Mainly, because he's been very good – despite Peter Mandleson claiming he would make the town a laughing stock.

After recovering from the visit of 700 West Ham fans the town is going to have a million visitors as part of the tall ships race 2010. Harlepool will for the first time be hosting a stage in this prestigious global event.
The only issue is there's only one road in and out...

Carlin MusicIron Bridge House3 Bridge ApproachLondon NW1 8BD United Kingdom info@carlinmusic.com

Many thanks to Carlin Music publishers of Elvis for their recent sponsorship. The King... will be will be with me every mile now.

Previous runs - RUN TO THE BEAT

The link below takes you to a record of my previous run for the Evelina Hospital - Run to the beat from the 02.

It also confirms the terrible conditions everyone ran in on the day.

http://www.gsttcharity.org.uk/fundraising/echappeal_beat_marathon.html

This link takes you to footage and results from the event.

http://www.runtothebeat.co.uk/Event/Results.aspx

Photos

http://www.sportcam.net/CompetitorImage.aspx?ID=1376&General=No

I came 598th out of 10,000.

Leave a comment if you know of any cheap local races in the run up for the marathon.