Again it's been a while since my last post, infact I only seem to be posting from Kenya these days! as you've probably gathered I'm back here again as part of my spring Marathon preparations. Having been weighing up my options in terms of my marathon choice my decision I guess was a fairly straight forward one in the end... I will be running the Virgin London Marathon this April in my pursuit of the Olympic qualifying time. Whilst I have been in Kenya London Marathon have been out here too, they announced details of the full elite field here in Iten too, as ever the field is about as strong as you will see anywhere in the World and promises to be an exciting race both from a domestic and international perspective. From a British view point pretty much everyone who is looking to achieve the Olympic time will also be running in London too. Here's a link to the elite field....
Between my two Kenya trips there's been plenty going on, xmas new year was a fairly quiet one with the family, well as much as it can be an excitable 3 years old Thomas, we had a scaletrix set...sorry I mean Thomas did, this present was well recieved allround though though :) After new year I raced my first cross race for 12months in the form of the Hampshire County Champs, its been 4 years since my last outing at the event and another rare opportunity to pull on a Guernsey Race. I had a good race with John Beattie, as we had both decide to race seeing as we were bothing after a race that weekend. We had a pretty close race but I managed to draw clear within the last 600m or so to win by a handful of seconds. There a link to part of the race on Channel TV (not sure it will work in all regions though)....
Following the race I had a good week of training at home before then picking up a cold unfortunately, it meant I arrived in Kenya a little under the weather, not ideal given we are 8000feet above sea level and with some very dusty trails to contend with this time around. The cold is now thankfully over with and training is starting to tick along nicely up here. The weather has been much better than November, no rain in sight!... ironically a few people were complaining about the dust but hey I will take that over muddy sticky trials any day! although I have said I might bring with me some B&Q dust masks to run with next time I come :)
Kenya as a training venue never fails to inspire me and our long run this morning inparticular was no different, whilst we had to contend with running through some thick smoke from a small bush fire (if you call the crop fields of Kenya the bush!) having run the long run in one direction, some 22miles plus miles it meant we got to see some fairly remote parts of around Iten. Thankfully we had drinks providing on the run and a lift back afterwards, note before a much need stop a small kenyan shack for a bottle of coke! On our drive back we saw something rather noval a Kenya peleton, at the time we thought this was just a training ride but turns out this was actually a race. A lot of them had single speed bikes that looked like something out of the 1970's, many were also had running shoes rather than cycling shoes. 
Watch out Lance, the Kenyan's are coming!
Anyhow with 12 weeks to go until London the training as they say start here.. ok technically I have be preparing in the general sense since a took a break after the World Champs last year, but these next 12 weeks is when the real work take places.
