Slow January

Did you miss me last weekend?  I was so busy unpacking boxes I forgot to write my blog.  I remembered on Tuesday but decided that seen as I had an exciting event on Wednesday I'd leave my blog till today so I could tell you about it.
But back to slow January.  In one way it was fast in that we're almost at the end of January.  I am glad to see the back of January and the same goes for February.  There are plenty of important miles to put in on these months as well as core strength sessions because building your base can make or break your season.  Go out too hard without the proper training and you'll end up with an early season injury which could put you out for a few months.  And running on snow and ice increases the odds of such an injury.
Fortunately I have avoided and slips, falls or injuries although there have been some close calls.  We've had a lot of cold crisp sunny days which has led to some fabulous view over Glasgow to the mountains from my new running routes.
My reference to slow January is the speed I am meant to be running at to get my heart rate down - I have the same battle every January.  The cold obviously affects my heart rate making it beat faster to pump the blood round my body to keep me warm, but it's still too high.  I'm struggling to run slow enough to keep the rate down and on a negative split run my heart rate was high when I was going slower and bang on target (for a slow run) when I was running faster!  Even today's 1 hour run had my heart rate perfect until we came to a down hill, and I was trying to run slow, and the heart rate increased - I averaged 5:45 mins per KM but looks like I need to get to 6:10's to hit my HR target.  I know there will be a turning point, there is every year, but it's frustrating.
On Wednesday I was asked to take part in a webcast for a marketing company in the financial services sector.  A 45 minute live interview about my business background, my ultra running and how I've used this to help my business and certainly my mental health during lockdown.  I applied the 7Ps principle (piss poor preparation precipitates piss poor performance) and started going through my big races and what I'd learned along the way.  It's amazing what you forget, even the important details.  Fortunately I have my blog to go back over all the small points that I may have written about in the past but forgotten about.  My blog was always intended to be my journal of my adventures and the feedback from the UK wide audience was very positive.  May have inspired a few to get off the couch, out of the fridge, out of their mental fog and onto the pavements for a couch to 5km!
Today my coach sent me some races to look at in May / June - 2 were 50 mile ultras and the other a 58 km ultra.  I read their COVID -19 policies and they look well set up with staggered starts, fast ones off first to avoid overtaking the slower ones, 3 lanes coming into check points with masks being required to be worn as you go through.  I really hope that these events take place and it gets me motivated just thinking about having a date in the diary to aim for an event to help prepare me for URR in August.
If you haven't got an event in the diary then create your own one.  I'm looking at running the West Highland Way possibly end of June, beginning of July.  The only thing that would stop me is if there were travel restrictions.  Having something to aim for makes all the difference to your approach so start searching for a race or make up your own challenge.  January is almost over and before we know it so with February.  The good news is we're closer to our vaccinations but in the meantime stay safe.