Hitting Those Targets

Bang, right on the button, today I hit my first target of 2015, I’ve made my 50^th birthday. Time for celebrations all around. Unfortunately it’s going to take a little longer to hit my 2^nd target. The illness, that has taken over my life since the start of year, has put paid to any dreams of racing, or even training hard for the time being. But, I am back running and have progressed from running like a beginner to running like an old man who has to keep stopping every 100m, in the space of a week, so who knows where I’ll be by next Tuesday.

The targets haven’t changed, they’re just postponed, I actually feel really positive today, despite still coughing my guts up during the day and night. At least while I’ve been ill I’ve been able to use the time wisely in pursuit of other areas of Business. One I’m really excited about is an event I want to put on for like minded runners, but it’s in it’s infancy and I need to pull together my team to make it work, so more about that later.

It was nice to receive some birthday gifts off some of my clients, not something you expect as they pay for a service, but it shows the type of relationship I have with, most, of my clients. Of course I did warn them that nothing changes, if they’re wanting an easy session there are plenty or rubbish PTs they could choose from. I’ve also signed up to run a boot camp in Sandbach, we’re doing a three week trial to see how it works, I do enjoy boot camps, in fact I enjoy getting stuck in myself, though I tend to lay off some of the activity if I have a race on.

Now to focus my energy on getting better. I reckon I’ll be able to race in February, but I might leave it until March to focus my training more specifically, until then I’m going to have fun, starting with some fizzzzz.

See you on the other side.

Written by Roger Alsop

www.rogeralsop.co.uk

Changing the M50 Goalposts

After a bad cold and an Achilles flare up put paid to racing in December I was looking forward to our Xmas and New Year celebrations, particularly as we were off to Spain. With everything functioning well and warm bright weather to hand I managed to get in a good ten days of training and was looking forward to getting home and having one last race as an M45.

Unfortunately two days after my return I contracted the worse cold I’ve ever had, which has meant stopping all training, eating very little, shivering in our sauna of a house, spending daytime hours in bed and having some very strange recurring, and quite boring, dreams (must be the 10000m runner in me). With two days until the weekend my constant headache tells me that I won’t be recovered to enjoy the weekend, let alone race. I’d also planned to race just after my birthday, wanted to capitalise on my new age group, afterall I was first in my 1^st race as an M40 and 1^st M40 at the Alsager 5, and then I was first M45 at Alsager again and the Trafford 10k, but I think that weekend is probably out of the window too.

I was also starting to make plans for all sorts of races I wanted to do well in, but I’m just going to have to wait and see how I recover before making any commitments.

So for the time being I’m going to chill, run for fun and help others to meet their goals until I’m ready to come back to mine.

It’s not the best news but I know so many talented athletes that can no longer run and others who no longer have the desire to push themselves, so I count myself lucky.

Written by Roger Alsop

www.rogeralsop.co.uk