Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone.

Not much happened last year from an athletic point of view. After the weekly travel to Seoul and Beijing and the odd trip to Taipei, there wasn't much time left for the family or training.

Towards the end of the year I managed to do some good training and get through the HK trailwalker which seems to have more ascent/descent than almost anything else that I've done. Some of the old crusty english types, still in Hong Kong since the '97 handover, say it's 9000 metres up and 9000 metres down, unlikely but who knows. It was hot and some of the more accomplished runners crashed and burned so I was happy to get it complete. That was my fourth trailwalker type event but the first where the whole team of four made it to the finish. This meant that the time was slower but still in the top 20% of the full team finishers.

Since then the training has been steady, bodyweight is getting back into check, slowly.

From an injury perspective I'm suffering from a RHS groin strain, it feels like a tendonitis and is right in there where the tendon meets the bone. I was managing it with Voltarin 100 tabs that are available over the counter in HK without a script. But staying off the hills over the last month has allowed it to improve somewhat.

I spent Christmas / new year in England with the in-laws and the kids. Managed to get some nice 2-3 hour sessions on flat frozen tracks along frozen canals in the country. I used my heavier goretex approach shoes for most of these sessions.

Even managed to get up to Snowdon (highest hill in Wales at 1085m) for an afternoon.



In terms of goals for 2008.

* I'd like to get one big race completed - Simple. I have one preference in the USA which I have applied for and hope to be accepted.