It lies with me cried the Queen of maybe, for her merchandise, he traded in his prize..

Got my train tickets booked for the London Marathon, the elite roster was published in Athletics Weekly and I purchased my 7th, yes 7th pair of Nike Lunarglide. As if that wasn’t enough, I had another solid week of training, culminating with the penultimate xc of the NW League season at Walton Hall Park.

There was an excellent speed session at Wavertree on Tuesday, 7 mins/4 mins/4 mins then 12 x 75 seconds off 1 min recovery. I average 80 second laps for the initial 15 min work out then for the 75 second efforts made sure I done 400 metres. My 400’s varied but I was always under 75 seconds. My poor calfs were really feeling the strain on the first few but once I got going I felt strong. I was dizzy after the 6th effort but clung on for another two before calling it a day. I was freezing cold too, which didn’t help and maybe if it was a tad warmer I’d have maybe squeezed another couple of 400’s.

The following day I ran my usual 10 miles, trying to include as many hills as possible, I cranked out 33:09 for the last 5 miles which felt surprisingly easy, maybe I should have done another few 400’s the day before! We had a time trial/tempo in work on Thursday which was over 5k and had a decent turn out considering it was so cold. Trev Morris, who seems to spend more time here than he did when he work with me turn up wanting to run 17:30-ish for the 5k. I managed a respectable 5:40 pace, Trev around 20 seconds quicker over the 5k. I doubled up in the evening, James and Martin were out early for a long tempo but the pace would be too rich for my blood so I hit the Woolton hills in the evening with other PLS lads from groups 1 & 2 which was a great work out ran a pace I could cope with. I ran the usual xc on Friday, then ran a slow 10 miles on Saturday afternoon.

Liverpool escaped the bad weather over the weekend and conditions were ideal for the xc on Sunday. The ground was very firm and the Walton Hall course is flat and without doubt the least demanding xc in the league calendar. Walton is where I made my PLS debut, finishing a credible 13th in the 2009 race. The field was a lot weaker than it was Sunday, with the competition really heating up between Liverpool Running Club and Liverpool Running Bugs. With the conditions the way they were, I expected Martin and particularly James to be hard to beat, add to that the fact Ian Lawton and Matt Rose turned out as guests, it was always going to be a fast race.

Walton Hall Park is the home of the Liverpool School Boys and it’s always a hoot having a look at the old pictures of the under 11 and under 16 teams with friends and family as well as many famous Liverpool/Everton players dotted around the ages. One of the PLS lads Ian Russell was showing me his young mug in the same team as Gary ‘I can’t believe it’s not Baresi’ Ablett in the 1979/80 squad.

To try and make it a bit more interesting, Ian Magill had changed he course slightly, lengthening it and trying to make it a tad more xc than just running around a field. Hats off to Ian and Liverpool RC for the effort, it was more enjoyable than usual. I imagine running from the front is something you improve with from experience and Graham Houghton has bags of experience in this league having probably won over 20 races in 10 years. James stuck with Matt and Ian early on and opened up a decent lead over Graham and Martin. Ian and Matt were 1st and 2nd respectively but James was 1st counter and the winner. Graham finished 2nd with Martin 3rd, it’s been nip and tuck between these three all year. I ended up 25th, not a show stopping performance but I still averaged 6.10 m/mile which shows you the standard was pretty good. The club honours went to LRC who edged out LRB to make it level in the series with one race to go.