April Monthly Summary!

Month 4 of 12 of the year of 2017 is done and for me and well... it's not all Happy and Shiny...

So, everyone around, distance, distance, I didn't do enough.. (you can kind of fit that to the tune).

My continuing mission towards an annual total of 650 miles has continued on target. To hit this I need to be averaging 54 miles a month or roughly 14 miles a week.

In April I covered a mere 45.3 miles, for easily my lowest total of the year. But as a way of demonstrating I'm still testing myself, this low total gave me my highest elevation gain of the year. Makes sense.

This total included 1 race (6m, 13%).

Not a good month, although my parkrun volunteer stats have gone through the roof!

So far...

Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	Total
78.5	71.4	77.4	45.3	272.6
12%	11%	12%	7%	42%

I did say I was anticipating a poor month and I delivered. Still ahead of teh target curve and I can pretty much guarantee getting 26.2 miles in May... and possibly another 6 in Treforest...

Anyone in Llanelli or Tref say hi! I'll be the one crying in anticipation of an awful race. and a PW (or DNF)

Race Report - Bryn Bach 6 mile / Lap the Lake fun run

I've always been a reasonable fan of old Parc Bryn Bach. My 5k PB is round it's very flat parkrun (although I do prefer Merthyr and Penallta as runs), it's free toast is legendary among... certain individuals I know and generally, it's a nice, big, green park.

It's quite nice!

So when a run comes up around it, I do occasionally like to participate, even if I'm pretty confident the flat parkrun will not be representative of the conditions!!

Got Andrew Cooper in the background! Hi Andrew!

So, 286 others joined me behind the café thing and we were off on a 6 mile (not 10k) jaunt. The hill isn't a devastating one, but going up it twice still takes it's toll (I think I lost 40 or so secs the 2nd time up). The rest of the course is reasonable, up and down a little but scenic, clean and well organised marshaled. Ideal!

So, how did I do? Targets were:

Baseline:0:52:00 (8:40 min/ml)

Achievable:0:50:00 (8:20 min/ml)

Would be nice, but maybe beyond me this time:
0:47:00 (7:50ish min/ml)

and I did:


1 minute (according to my watch, gun time was 46:12, no sign of a chip yet) under top target. Think I handled the hills quite well after a couple of weeks of minimal training. Pretty confident I'll at least make the trip to Llanelli now, even if I'm not exactly going to light up the field! Very happy!

Once that was all done, it was a coffee, a welsh cake and back out for the fun run. 2.6ish miles with the daughter at a far more casual pace of course.