Try, try and try again...

If anything I'm persistent and that's probably why training for 'going long' suits me to the ground. Last week I said I was going to attempt the 'moderation' thing over the Christmas period. I did really well up until Christmas Day where I tipped myself right over the edge and as far away from moderation as possible, consuming the most indulgent home made chocolate cake and custard for dessert having already eaten the entire contents of Ben & Lies' lovely festive fare and my weight in chocolate throughout the day. So... I still can't do moderation, a bit like I can't roll my R's, but hey, it's not for the want of trying. I'm not going to see this as a negative, I'm going to see it as a work in progress. And like my training the things I'm not great at I will work on and on and on at until I'm better at them. This year I managed to not stuff my face with chocolate until Christmas day, maybe next year I'll manage to make it to Boxing Day or even New Year, small steps, small steps. If I use this persistence and attitude for my training then improvement will be slow but it will happen, and anyway, who needs miracles!

This week was an easy, easy week after 28 days of hard work and getting back into the rhythm of training. I was looking forward to spending time with family and friends and just kicking back and resting. Tom and I had a couple of days in sunny South Shields ( a few family traumas - it is Christmas after all) and a lot of quality time spent with my ma, brother and lovely niece Kelsey. I love it, time with the most important people in the world, you just can't beat it. We were home for Christmas Day which we spent with my cousin Ben and his very pregnant girlfriend Lies and I was honoured to have been asked to be the baby's Godmother when their bundle of joy arrives. Just wait little one, we'll have you out in a baby buggy running round the streets of Leeds before you know it!!!

It has become our tradition to run the Chevin Chase in Otley on Boxing Day, a run that rips the muscles out of your quads and the air from your lungs. I was apprehensive about how I was going to run. Having spent over two months with 'that' injury which was still niggling, I really wasn't sure how it would behave on the day. The race is mostly off road, very hilly and has hard descents, definitely a testing course for my ankle. You can imagine my surprise when I came in only 20secs short of last year and was 10th girl. Most importantly though, the foot didn't hurt and great to see my running fitness hasn't gone completely down the pan.

We went on to Tom's mums from there and we ate like Kings and slept like logs, getting in a couple of light training sessions in between snoozes and meals, lovely. Back home today and on the way home we went to Loughborough pool to get a quick 4km swim session in. I wasn't really in the mood, we'd been driving for 3hrs and the prospect of a cold swim session wasn't greatly endearing. However, I'm really glad we did it as I swam well and managed to pb for 400m's getting near the 6min mark for the first time with 6.01. I'm getting pay back for relentless hrs and metres doing drills and analysing my stroke underwater and also hanging onto the feet of Tom in our 10 x 300m swim sets where we alternate drafting. I just need to use this technique on the bike and I'll be on a winner!!

Training in anger starts again tomorrow and I'm looking forward to getting a lot of bike volume in over the next week now that the frost has gone and temperatures are not sub zero anymore. As for the moderation thing, unfortunately I still haven't quite got the knack of it, so it's back to the all or nothing syndrome, which means that training is all and chocolate is nothing. My personality loves it and I can't change it try as I might.

"You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day."

Marian Wright Edelman

Happy New Year to one and all.

H. x