Proving the adage that an athlete's blogging frequency is inversely proportional to how injured they are*

*I think - maths and stuff never was my strong point.

I left you back in September following a decent first week of training in the build up to San Sebastian. Unfortunately the knee injury I was carrying then turned out to be far more difficult to shake than I anticipated and in spite of being relatively sensible (running 3 laps of Richmond Park aside) my body just needed a rest. Whilst I struggled for a diagnosis - glute not firing/rotated pelvis seem to be the physio buzz phrases for 2015 - a club mate sagely referred to it as the PB tax. There was no escaping that I'd been training hard for 9 months. I'd set PBs are every distance from 3000m to the marathon, I'd had nine days off since January 1st, two of those were at a stag do and three of them were cycling coast to coast, not exactly rest. My body was sending me a not so subtle message that it needed some down time and so I reluctantly brought my season to close.

Laguna or Stevenage...?

And so here we are... Unbelievably it's November and I'm delighted to be racing again. A work trip to Southern California meant my cross debut was postponed. I'm not expecting sympathy but a small part of me would rather have been running around playing fields in Stevenage on November 7th than cresting a trail as the sun rose behind me illuminating the Pacific Ocean, a really small part mind... This left the North London XC Champs as my 2015/16 season opener and it's hard to describe how happy I was to be toeing a start line. Coming away with the win was the icing on the cake but pinning a number on my Serpie vest for the first time in 4 months brought a smile to my face. God I love cross. I'm by no means great at it, I descend badly and corner worse than the car I was driving State-side but the mud, the tactics and the fact that time is irrelevant makes it almost gladiatorial. Throw in the team element and I'm smitten!

I will still be heading to Spain for San Sebastian but running it for fun as a masochistic way of celebrating the beginning of my 4th decade and hopefully pacing someone else to a PB. Then it's XC all the way to February and Nationals, which I missed last year. 

Roll on 2016!

Dana Point, a suitable contrast to Hackney Marshes in 0c