Portugal latest...

Settled in to my accommodation now after being here a few days now, i'm sharing a place with Andy Vernon. We are a short walk from the Old Village within the Vilamoura complex which is wear the Loughborough crowd are staying, approx a 10min walk away. I must admit I'm quite jealous of their places in the old village as our appartment is fairly basic one bedroom which is ment to sleep 4 adults! (two pull out beds in the lounge) but we don't need much to be honest and we are eating with the others in the evenings at their place now.

We paid a visit to the local supermarkets yesterday and stocked up on food for next week or so, you tend to eat a lot on a training camp! all good nutritional food though. However I did enjoy a chocolate ice cream crepe the other night but for 7 euro's I won't be eating too many! Supermarket food isn't too badly priced considering the exchange rate isn't in our favour these day but oranges are a bargin. They sell them road side... 2 euro's for 25 large organges and they taste great. There's a number of orange groves (if that's what you call them) nearby.

In terms of training things are starting to tick along nicely now, I did my first track session this morning, my first since the Aldershot training camp over 3 weeks ago. I felt I lacked a bit of spring in my step but that's to be expected after an illness and mostly steady running until today. All in all it went well though and i'm looking forward to running again later with seemingly no stiffness from the session. The only thing i need to look after is a slight achilles niggle, I wore my racing flats rather than spikes this morning and my calves feel ok at the moment. Weather has been mixed today, it rained for the first time when we were having breakfast but during the track session it was hot and sunny. Most of us finished covered in mud though! as the water on the track plus I guess the usually dusty conditions made the water quite dirty, and with something like 20-30 athletes on in the group at various points it ment a lot of water being flicked up.

Anyhow that's all for now, hope the athletes back home in Guernsey enjoyed the Easter races, sorry I missed them.

Cheers

Lee