Desperate to run the London marathon

  No, not me, silly! I'll be watching the London marathon as usual on Sunday and must admit I was quite looking forward to some of the focus switching onto some of the  leading UK based athletes but it seems likely the majority of overseas inviyed athletes will make the start line albeit less relaxed than they would otherwise have been.   Still I hope that the cameras will find time to film the efforts of top Northern runners like clubmate Gareth Raven (887)
  Salford's Andi Jones. (number 3,  here at Wilmslow half) and much to my surprise I'm told that another top local marathoner
Chris Cariss is making a major comeback. Remember his 2:15 in 2004 ?

  A dozen east African athletes , including last year's winner Sammy Wanjiru, have been flown (presumably courtesy of Virgin) by the organisers to Madrid for a flight to London.  Easy peasy!  But how about Mara Yamauchi nightmare journey.  Tokyo to Albuquerque for high altitude training, then to Denver (last Thursday) for London flight which was of course cancelled due to that Icelandic volcanic ash.  So she flew to New Jersey hoping to fly to Ireland (Shannon).  No luck, so flew to Lisbon, followed by a 6 hour taxi journey to Madrid.  Failed to secure places on ferry to Portsmouth.  So rented a car and drove to Paris which took another 2 days but failed to get a seat on Eurostar.  Next move then a taxi to Le Touquet on the coast to board a private plane organised by VLM to Sussex completing the journey by car into London. Desperate or what?

An ordeal which Yamouchi descibed as "interesting".   Let's hope that the experience won't detract from Sunday's performance for the UK's only chance of marathon success. 
  It's to be hoped the week is going better for you marathoners out there and that after all your build up the tapering is going well and the energy is flooding back!  
  Meanwhile, as one resigned (probably!)  to limiting my racing exploits to half the distance, the week up to now has been about recovering carefully after Sunday's 10K,  whilst upping the volume a touch in a week without a race at the end of it.   So I followed the very easy 5 on Monday with a couple of outings  yesterday.  A flat grassy prelunch with a hillier 3.5 on the road in the evening.  A rare run from our Complete Runner shop to home. 

I was "invited" to join a group of simialarly mature (presumably retired) runners for a speed session over in Airedale today  mid morning but I've learnt to be cautious returning to race pace and so opted  for a solid 8 miler on the road instead.  I'll go offroad tomorrow (Thursday) leaving this week's track session until Friday.  

The skies have been spectacularly clear today, no sign of that ash,  but  the chill in the air was still prevalent and made the initial miles into the cooling breeze hard work on my fragile lungs.   But going back to the marathon the forecast is for the temperature to rise.  

Add sun screen to your checklist!