With only a few months left until the Seville marathon (which is now sold out – unsurprisingly given it gets great reviews from runners and started at an astonishing reasonable €30) I’m back in training after my easier week in Ethiopia, which you can read all about here. With the travel and altitude, I “only” ran about 30-odd miles that week, and my legs felt the benefits of that at the weekend. My track session was sprightlier than usual on Saturday and my Sunday long run (16 miles yesterday) didn’t feel nearly as much of a slog as usual. For those slogging their way through a marathon schedule, I do thoroughly recommend a proper rest now and again. It turns out that it makes everything feel better (or hurt less, anyway).

My long run on Sunday morning came after a Saturday night spent at my running club Christmas Ball – a lovely event not least as it offers the opportunity to see what your running friends look like when wearing clothes that aren’t made of high-vis lycra. Plus I even won an award, which provides a lovely end (well, it’s December now) to my running year. Just one more cross-country race to go next weekend and then it’s nothing but increasingly long runs and hard pre-marathon training. Though on the plus side, I think that gives me a licence to eat non-stop mince pies …

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