Hills...

Had some good news on Friday from James in Buenos Aires. He's had two lengthy root canal sessions with the dentist and his tooth has been fixed and he's now free of pain which means he can get on with the rest of his trip.

I had a day off from running on Friday but was up early Saturday morning for the G3 race at Newland's Corner. It was a great morning; sunny and cold and slightly hazy. The race is one of a series of three which are run at monthly intervals in January, February and March. The course is pretty much the same for all three races but with minor differences. And there are always loads of hills; the worst being the slog up to St Martha's Church from the south side of the hill. A lot of runners became walkers for the climb and there were the inevitable bottle-necks as the path is quite narrow.
I got around the 10k course in 1hr 04'57" which put me in 149th position out of 300.

Sunday morning I ran with Jenny and Jackson on the usual morning route around Hankley Common and then, after dropping Richard at Gatwick for his flight to Spain, I was back out for a punishing hill session at the Devil's Jumps. I left the rucksack in the car and concentrated on trying to get some speed up on the climb to the top of the hill. The first time up was done at a steady pace but after that I pushed myself as hard as I could and managed to get the time down from 2'37 to 2'14 then 1'59 and finally 1'51. The last effort was an absolute killer and it took me a while to recover sufficiently enough for the jog back down to the car. It's a good work-out for Jackson too. He devoured his bowl of food when we got home and then fell into an exhausted sleep!

Monday lunchtime I did the 7k bridges run from work. The legs were pretty tired so I took it easy and just enjoyed the fresh air and watched the rowers out training and just generally jogged my way around.