Caught the NoroVirus bug, yuk

As you might imagine, the effects that the NoroVirus has on ones training regime aren't exactly positive.

After a meal out with 14 friends last week my first thought was that I'd contracted food poisoning. However, given the umpteen kids in my village, two of whom dined with us, that seem to have contracted the NoroVirus, this unfortunately seems to be the most likely cause as to my downfall last week.

Initially my main concern was that I wouldn't be able to attend the two-day TFM&A conference that I'd been so looking forward to since the previous 2009 event at Earls Court, London. However, then it dawned on me that not only would I miss my regular session at Running Club but that this could seriously set me back on my marathon training if it went on for, say, a week.

Thankfully though, the debilitating phase of the illness only lasted a few days and despite only consuming small amounts of Lucozade and one bowl of homemade lentil soup in 4 days, I was still able to run a 10k in 56.5 minutes when I hit the gym for the first time since I caught the bug.  The weekend session wasn't too bad either with an out and back 9.1 miler on Saturday from Penkridge towards Wolverhampton in 1 hour and 27 minutes followed by a 5 miler around the gorgeous Sutton Park on the Sunday. Two weeks to go until the Ironbridge Half marathon.

My real problem this week has in fact been that my feet have got blisters upon blisters from, I think, my alledgedly pronation-correcting insoles in my Saucony trainers. I'm going to attempt to rectify this problem by buying some other insoles but we shall see.

Ennstone 7 Wrekin Road Runners' Race 14/02/2010

Ouch!

Firstly, I wasn't expecting the Wrekin Road Runners Ennstone 7 race to be preceded by a mile long dash to the start of the race (my fault as I arrived a little late and the car parks we full so ended up parking outside my office) and secondly I wasn't anticipating quite so many hills in the race.

Still, what better way to spend Valentine's Day than to spend it dashing around Telford Town Park in the lovely morning sunshine?

The Ennstone 7 race is a really well organised race with a clearly marked out route, excellent marshalling, a couple of water stations and best of all; a cup of Kathy's wonderful hot soup to look forward to at the end, plus a medal for all finishers.

I thoroughly enjoyed this race, probably as the sun was shining, there was a strong turnout of happy runners and the route itself is really quite pleasant. Something that you don't see on many races is a talking Stegosaurus, but this race takes you right past several talking dinosaurs in the children's area of the park. All of the route in on hard surface utilising the park paths and the start and finish of the race is a lap or so around a track, or bowl. There are several hills en route which are quite manageable but the one at the end is a bit of a killer, however, I managed not to walk it so it can't be that bad.

This was a good race to include in my marathon training schedule, although it did hit me half way round that it is only 9 weeks until my very first marathon, the Shakespeare Marathon at Stratford upon Avon on April 25th 2010. I know I have some serious training to do for that as I can really feel the Ennstone 7 in my legs today :-)

Thank you Wrekin Road Runners for putting on a great race, see you at training on Tuesdays/Thursdays.