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Welcome to my diary.
Blimey! Ive got my very own training thread. Id better do some training then ! !.
Firstly, allow me to introduce myself, Im Riazor Blue, Im British, 38 years old and live in La Coruña in Galicia, N.W Spain. Im sure that some of you have heared of La Coruña through their football team Deportivo. Ive been living here almost 3 years now.
Running wise, I have always done a little bit of jogging, once a week or so. In March last year I passed through a village here called Ordenes and saw some posters advertising their carrera popular the following Sunday. I took the phone number and signed myself up to run. The race was 9.4Km (the races in Galicia always seem to be odd distances) and I finished in 53 minutes, collected my bright yellow t-shirt and now all my running socks are yellow aswell.
On the basis of not collapsing in a heap after the race in Ordenes, I decided to sign up for the marathon in Madrid. I was training for the Amsterdam marathon in 2001 but fell off a mountain two months beforehand and tore a load of ligaments in my left knee. After that I went back to my jogging. Anyway, Mapoma (MAraton POpular de Madrid) was 5 weeks after Ordenes, so it involved a few weeks of intensive training and lots of doubts. One good thing was that with so little time I decided that Id better not smoke, so from that day (March 16th I think) I havent. I try to convice my girlfriend that the money I spend going to races, on new kit etc is less than what I used to spend on fags.
Mapoma I finished in 4h08m and I was not too uncomfortable, although the 600Km drive back to La Coruña the next day was agony! That day, 27th April was when I was well and truly bitten by the bug. From then till now, I have run five half marathons (two in England two in Galicia and one in Portugal) with a PB of 1h39m, lots of strange distance carreras populares from 4.5km to 12.4km and one more marathon (San Sebastian) with a PB of 3h.37m.
My aims this year are Mapoma in April, where I can meet up with Antonio and maybe the marathon in Lisbon in December, with a scattering of halves, and populares along the way.
Training wise, I go for gentle runs around the esplanade here in La Coruña, every now and again I do a bit of off-road stuff in a couple of parks here and a longer run at the week-end. Depending on where I am in the training I do anything between 50 & 100Km per week. Everybody knows that hills and series are good quality training sessions, but evryone here knows that hills hurt and series are knackering, so I dont do them. Well, I didnt do them. The idea of writing this diary is to force myself to do at least one eack of these sessions per week. Or should I say for you guys to force me to do these sessions.
Thanks to Andy for allowing me to ramble on to the world in general and to Antonio for directing me to this site. Well Ill try to make thinks interesting but Im sure that it wont be as interesting or as well written as Antonios, Nigels or SFs.
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