New Year, New Season, Same Goal

So the New Year is on us and with it brings new challenges.  Since my last update I've been quite active and slowly eased myself back into a routine.  This stage of the season is all about building up the base of endurance to enable you to add the higher volume and intensity sessions later in the year.  It’s also an excellent time to try different types of training so this year I've had a go at Mountain Biking.  The main reason being I've entered the Bolton Hill Marathon in March and thought it would be a good opportunity to check out the course on bikes ! The course is anything but flat and very muddy in places, with the odd cobbled Roman road thrown in to shake out your fillings it most certainly will be a challenging course with fewer than 20 people going under 4 hours last year.  It took the best part of 5 hours to complete the course 2 weeks ago on bikes mainly due to the fact I kept falling off every time it became muddy… I blame the equipment, seized front suspension and Road cycling shoes/pedals don’t make for an easy transition from Road Cycling
to Mountain Biking ! However it does make for a morning of laughter all be it at my expense.

Sunday just gone I decided to run a large section of the course to get idea of the pace I was able to hold and experience the conditions first hand.  I covered just under 18.4 miles in 3 hours so that would of put me just over the 4 hour mark.  I wasn't pushing it as I didn't fancy going over on an ankle but that said it will be a very tall ask to break 4 hours on this course especially as I’m not a runner and have two other sports to train for.
The Bolton Marathon race was planned as my first race of the season but an unexpected entry for a local Half Marathon has become available this coming Sunday so I have decided to enter this along with a couple of my training partners, If nothing else it will provide a few weeks if not months of bragging rights for somebody… just hope it’s me !

I’ll let you know how I get on and also provide a little more detail regarding my training for the Marathon in my next update

Bye for now.