MORE TREES

Wilfred donated his two Catalpa trumpet trees to our garden. Here they are.

THAT AIN'T HALF BAD

Was hoping to finish inside one hour, on the 10.4k in Kortenberg. It was very windy, pretty hilly and at times extremely slippery on the mud tracks. Yet I arrived in 54:46.

That's good, certainly good enough for now. The trick will be to train twice or trice weekly from now on and bring my 10k time down to well under 50 minutes.

It's coming back; I feel it.

START AGAIN

Okay, enough. I've been not particularly motivated and very lazy since Amsterdam. The odd training was typically short. Twenty minutes on a treadmill in Port Dickson, that kind of stuff. And two days ago finally again the first office training loop, 35 minutes.

So this afternoon I'll do the 10 (point four) k in Kortenberg, a stone's throw from home (for someone with an exceptionally strong arm, but still). It will be hard and I'll finish in a time that will be extremely unsatisfactory. That'll teach me for procrastinating.

Stay tuned.

TREES

Today I bought four trees. Silverbirches. Four meters high. I bought them over the Internet. Now I need to sort out the logistics of getting them from Herk-de-Stad into our garden.

And my running? I've come to a near-complete standstill.

WHAT NEXT

It's time to pick up football again. My fiftieth is on a Saturday, and I would like to play a match on that day (though it will be in February, and Belgian climate being what it is games may well be cancelled). So I went training on Wednesday. It was only moderately successful, as my back and upper leg started hurting and I had to leave the pitch before we were done. Still, it was good to smell the grass again.

I don't want my running to go to waste, but am also not motivated to continue training for many hours almost daily. So I am going to focus now on trying to bring down my personal best on the 10 kilometers, from the 50:06 that I have now to something nearer 45 minutes. This will still require several training runs per week. But they'll be shorter and much more varied.

And after February I'll start building up towards a good 20k of Brussels, on the last Sunday in May. Would like to finish this time in under 1:48.

So no marathon for me in Spring 2009. A pity to some extent, as I was already getting a bit enthusiastic for running in either Rome or Barcelona, my two favorite European cities after Amsterdam. But the training regime is too heavy, and there's much work to do on our house and garden.

The 10k first, then. There's one in three weeks from now in Evere, which is close to where we live. I'll take inspiration from this schedule for preparation. The first training is on Tuesday. Until then, I'm taking it easy.