Sunday saw me take part in my first half marathon in over 13 years, the Reading Half Marathon, and what a brilliant race it was.

As you may have read back in November, I took the plunge and entered the Reading Half Marathon and continued with the MAF training principals exclusively with the idea I'd going into my race with at least a great aerobic base and possibly missing some speed. This was a bit of a gamble as I'd never heard anyone train like this before and had certainly never taken this approach myself. Seeing as I hadn't done a half marathon in a while, I thought "What the heck. It'll be an interesting experiment. Worst case scenario, I blow it. Best case, I finish the race strong and get the sub-90 minute finish time I'd be aiming for".

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Over the Christmas holidays, I was compelled (a visit was due anyway) to return to sunny South Africa for the first time in five years - my first Christmas back in SA in 7 years - by my cousin's desire to marry a gun-toting children's pastor (lovely chap).

As part of my holiday back home, I decided I'd venture out to see what South Africa's first and only (at the moment) parkrun was like. It'd been a very very very long time since I last ran in South Africa, let alone raced, and from the one other run I'd had in Jo'burg during my hols, a gentle 10k, I knew it would be a toughie.

So nice and early on Christmas eve, I bundled my wife into the car and we headed down to Delta Park for a quick spin round the park (me - my wife doesn't run). We got there with about half an hour to spare so I could warm up and introduce myself to the organiser - the one and only, Bruce Fordyce

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My running this year has gone really well and my current long-slow training is proving to be very enjoyable and I'm seeing results already. I've not run any races, but I can see the positive effects as I cover more distance in the same amount of time at lower heart rates - I'm currently doing lots of long slow runs using a bastardized version of the training ideas in this HADD Article which I discovered when investigating the merits of MAF training

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I've just caught up on the coverage of the men's 5000m final at the 2011 Daegu World Champs and Mo Farah is on fire. Fantastic last lap...

Mo Farah has incredible speed left in his legs at the end of the 5000m. It's pretty amazing. Great work and I think this makes up for being pipped at the line in the 10,000m

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I watched this live this morning on the BBC and must say I was on the edge of my seat. This was probably the most gripping 10,000m race I've watched and oh so close for Mo Farah. I think if he leaves his kick until 400m to go (instead of about 500m in this race) he'll get the Olympic gold.

Pete Larson makes an interesting observation about the stride rate

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11 days ago I ran the third of three of the Queen Mother Reservoir 10k races in the series. This was my first and probably last running of this race.

The 10k race is a very very flat two lap race around the top of the Queen Mother Reservoir

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On Sunday 22 May 2011, I ran the Stoke Row 10k for the first time. It's a relatively close race to home, but the thing that sold it for me was free music festival in the pub gardens afterwards. I thought this would be a great opportunity for my wife to have something to do whilst I run around the 'burbs and it would also make the run a bit of a "grand day out", which it proved to be, but we'll get onto the day's entertainment in a moment. First the race.

First, the race description...

The 10k route will start and finish at The Cherry Tree Inn, Stoke Row, taking you through some beautiful undulating Oxfordshire Countryside. Starting at 10.30 am, you will be chip timed, have water stops, plenty of clear route signage and marshalls.

This is pertinent as "undulating" is probably a little tame, but "hilly" is a bit too severe. This is quite a tough run as the elevation graph from my Garmin shows...

As you can see, there's quite a bit of climbing involved. It is also mostly offroad which the race description doesn't mention. It would have been good to know this in advance as I would have liked to have tackled it in my Merrells.

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On Sunday 15 May 2011 I ran what I think I should start to call my local 10k race - the Woodley 10k. As with the Shinfield 10k race, this is also a fast and relatively flat race and I thought I may just be able to get the sub-40min 10k I just missed at Shinfield.

Following a request from a colleague, this and hopefully my future "first time" race reports, will be a bit more in depth.

Given Woodley is so close to home, and the fact that parking is limited to pretty much whatever Woodley town centre has, my wife and I cycled to the race. Bike racks are very limited too, but nothing a long chain and a firm fence post or tree couldn't solve.

The Woodley 10k starts and finishes at the town end of Memorial Recreation Ground on Headley Road in Woodley. When we got there the kiddies' 3k race was still underway and in it's final stages and quite a large crowd of runners and supporters building up around the start/finish area. For those concerned about these sort of things, there were plenty loos on offer: about 8 port-a-loos as well as those in the buildings at the recreation ground, and a fitness instructor gave a little aerobics type warm up routine just before the race started.

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Monday was a public holiday and it turned out to be a great day for running. The weather was warm, the skies clear and I was in the mood for some running.

I ran the Reading Runner's Shinfield 10k

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Wednesday evening saw the running of the second of the three Yateley 10k races in the series, and like the first one, I ran it barefoot.

I'd had a bit of a sedentary two weeks building up to the race following the onset of the early signs of the dreaded top of foot pain (ToFP) that cropped up during my piggies hill training session on 22 June. With only a single tabata rowing session done between then and the race I went in the race very relaxed and rested with my foot feeling good too.

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