At the weekend I did the Swansea Bay 10K, loved it, and set a cracking time. Conditions on the day were difficult and my preparations were less than ideal to say the least, but I ran my fastest 10K this year and I was less than a minute away from my PB set in 2004. In running a sub-60 I've met the main goal I set myself this year.

With Swansea being 280 miles away from Leeds, I opted to make a long weekend of it and I arrived there on Friday evening. We got started reasonably early and I quickly lost count of just how much I had to drink. I didn't get to bed until after it had got light, and I was up again by midday. Not quite my idea of an Olympian-style run-up to a big race. I had 24 hours to recover for the race and it at the time I really didn't feel anywhere near enough.

After last weekend's 10K I decided to go for two 5Ks this weekend. Given my 62 minute 10K in Sheffield, I put 29 minutes into my Garmin as a target for both races. On Saturday at the Hyde Park Time Trial I managed 28:37, and at today's Challenge St. Helens I came home in 27:22 which equals my second best 5K performance. It's only short distances, but in the context of the amount of training I'm doing it's encouraging stuff.

Next weekend I'm doing the Swansea Bay 10K. Let's see how I get on!

Before that I've got my second salsa session. I've already forgotten everything I learned last week :-(

I went on holiday, I came back. I might write about that some other time, but this morning I ran the Bupa Great Yorkshire Run, a popular 10K down in Sheffield. Amazingly it's only my fourth 10K ever, and just my second 10K race of this year. As a result of my break from work-induced break from running over the summer I hadn't done anywhere near the amount of training I'd like to do going into a 10K. Although I'd not done anything since getting back from Denmark, I had managed a token 24K of training during August and so wasn't going into the race completely empty.

The trains weren't going to get me to Sheffield on time, so the night before I planned my journey and timings meticulously like it says to do in all the running books. It all went to plan - I got to central Sheffield via the tram in plenty of time and, once there, found the race to be very well organised. Things felt a lot less crowded and a bit more under control than at the Leeds 10K I did in June, and the facilities at the start appeared to be better too. Milling around at the start, there weren't many Fetch tops in evidence (that I could see) although I did meet a couple of lovely incognito Fetchies up at the start line who came up to me and said hello.

Given my recent performances, I was aiming for 66 minutes. 60 minutes would have equalled my Leeds 10K performance, but I benefited from a lot more training going into that race - not to mention being a few pounds lighter.