Marathon season kicks off in Berlin

This weekend the autumn marathon season gets properly underway with Berlin and Toronto Waterfront grabbing the early headlines before the focus shifts to a couple of potentially epic races in Chicago and New York.

After a summer of hobbling around in pain and not enjoying the little running I have been able to do at least I am starting to move well enough to run 3 or 4 times a week now. Commitment has been in short supply so this weekend I'm off to Berlin and who knows, the juices may be flowing again come sunday afternoon ! For once Haile won't be lining up as he is having a crack at New York and what should be more of a championship type race. I really hope this means that he is going to prepare seriously for London 2012. A marathon medal 16 years after his first 10,000m gold would be a fitting finale for the maestro - I will always remember the day I sneaked into the stadium in Addis during the pre-worlds training camp in 2001 and he came up to the stands to say hello and introduce himself. Class.

Anyway, one of the benefits of being away from proper training is more time to reflect on what has worrked or not worked in training and also time for things that I wouldn't normally do. Last saturday the Somerset Runing Network organised a runners fayre over at Taunton. Top of the bill was Dave Moorcroft and he gave a thoroughly engaging talk which its fair to say had the audience captivated. The two big takeouts for me were 1. be the best you can be (at whatever level yor talent allows) and 2. enjoy the journey because very few will get to win an Olympic medal or set a WR. Wise words indeed !

After lunch we had a cosy little group for my Faster Marathon workshop, lots of good questions and sharing of experiences between the participants and plenty of fun for me and the tub of marathon lard...