With two races and two birthdays, it’s been a busy old week.  

Last Sunday I took part in the Lingwood Leg-its Ekiden Marathon Relay before running the Bungay 10K on Wednesday - I think I must be trying to make up for lost time racing through the injury earlier this year.  

But I am trying to be more disciplined with races and use them as training for the main event later this year… the Berlin Marathon.  

My Garmin watch has been nagging me that my anaerobic capacity needs some attention so the Lingwood event was perfect.  

Each team had to run 29 (and a bit) laps to complete the marathon distance and I was in a team of six runners from Wymondham AC.  

The weather wasn’t kind at one point and we were thankful to have brought the Gazebo for shelter otherwise I don’t know how we would have kept all the lovely food that had been brought along dry…  

It has been great running in some new events so far this year. There are always going to be races that are the staples of any runners in Norfolk (Wroxham, Run Norwich etc) but taking part in events you haven’t run before keeps things fresher.  

I’ve mentioned before that somehow running as part of a team feels like some pressure is alleviated - we can all share the burden of expectation.  

What was nice about Sunday is that there was no expectation - just six mates running hard, eating flapjacks (or an extraordinary amount of vegan sausages in one case) and then getting a pint afterwards - it really was my kind of morning.  

There were absolutely no tactics to think of; it was just a case of running flat out for just under a mile before releasing your next runner.  

I was the fourth leg so by this time we had established a lead. However, with it being a small loop there were always people to try and chase down.  

It was also my kind of route with it being perfectly flat apart from one short, sharp incline which regular parkrunners at Lingwood will know as ‘Hillimanjaro’.  

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I haven’t run flat out for quite some time now and I was pleased that there was still a bit of speed there. I’m not sure you can count them as intervals though when there was a 25-odd minute gap between my legs.  

I think my average pace for each lap was about 5.50 minutes per mile so it was pleasing to see some of the Monday night training sessions at Wymondham AC starting to bear fruit.  

We actually managed to come first with our aggregated time working out at a 2:37 marathon. We were all pretty pleased with that until we started reeling off Norfolk runners who can run a lot quicker than that over the marathon distance... solo.  

I was then hoping to use the Bungay 10K on Wednesday as a bit of a benchmark run to see if I could dip back under the 40-minute mark for 10K (I know, I don’t know why I’m obsessed by it either).  

However, I was quite under the weather in the early part of the week meaning that my only real option was to use the race as a bit of a tempo effort.  

I’ll be honest, it’s not something I love doing. If I’m going to toe a start line then I want to be able to give it everything.  

But I can also see the bigger picture and I need to start prioritizing getting some longer runs in over the weekend. I couldn’t afford to lay myself really low again with a big effort on Wednesday.  

It’s certainly a nice route and a well organised event by Bungay Black Dogs. I’ll be back to give it a full effort at some point in the future.  

But since Wednesday it’s been about birthdays. My wife, Alison, and I’s are quite close together so with the amount of birthday food in the house I might have to relent a little on the 80/20 principle of eating nutritionally dense foods.  

With the long runs starting to kick up I think I can just about get away with it.  

Fifteen miles planned this weekend – surely that’s enough to earn an extra slice of Colin the Caterpillar?