27th December 2010 has been a great day, my birthday, anniversary (Mrs Kelly never too happy about me running on this day!) the Hot Toddy road race last and 2nd least... the start of my 16 week programme for the London Marathon 2011.
The day started well as rain instead of snow started to fall, the choice of road shoes and the trails took a short debate. Clare decided to stay at home (freezing conditions are not fun especially with our 3 boys running amok!) so I trundled off to Todmorden to join the start of the Hot Toddy 2010 organised by the Todmorden harriers by myself.
It was great to see so many Royton Road Runners taking part and I started my warm up with John Sweeney, whom I will be coaching in the new year (should the great thaw ever happen). Andy O'Sullivan was in fine form on the loud hailer and race organiser Ben Crowther got the race under way at 11:00am.
The hot toddy features one of the longest steep hills around, honestly it just seems to keep going on and on. Colin Green caught up with me after a mile or so and we ran together for the rest of the race. Now technically I was supposed to be using this as a training run, but the race bug always gets me and kept Colin in sight for the last couple of miles (I am rubbish at running downhill and Colin got 30m in front).
Happily I still had loads of energy left at the end and managed to overtake a few runners and finish 5 seconds behind Colin in 36:47 which was a PB of some minutes on the Hot Toddy for me!
There is a photo of me at the finish (I am wearing the attractive hat!)
http://www.todharriers.co.uk/hot_toddy/toddy2010_pics/imgpages/image045.html
I finished 45 out of some 248 runners so am very happy with the race result indeed.
I quick dash home, shower and back out to my sisters for a meal which was great fun.
So now the task of shedding a couple of Kilo's begins as I have done around 19 miles running in the last 3 weeks! , my next race will be Joe Salts new year awakener in Whitworth on... new years day.
I just need to do 6.4 miles this week and I will have recorded 1000 miles running in 2010
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