Down to business

Thankfully, the cold spell is over - it's unusual to have snow on the ground for more than a day or two in central London and it has made training a bit of a trial (along with inflicting my tights on the general population). At the moment, there are a lot of obvious "new year's resolution" runners out, who you can tell are wondering what the hell they've let themselves in for as they battle the snow, ice, cold and general misery...

Now that I have the fear, I'm getting down to the serious stuff. Saturday saw me try to find a hill. This led me to Greenwich Park, where I did laps of the observatory for a while. I was going to run the five miles home too, but I felt a twinge in my foot and so decided to be sensible for a change and just got the train back again. On the positive side, this allowed me to try a banh mi at a stall that I passed, bringing back memories of the 'nam. Sunday saw me run as far as I've managed for ages - my standard 11 mile lap of London along the river, through the parks and back on the canal. I have to step up the mid-week running too - I ran seven miles to Ladbroke Grove last night with 6kg on my back and got a bit of sand experience on Rotten Row. It doesn't quite recreate MdS conditions though - my pack was 10kg too light, the temperature was 40C too cold and the sand was nicely flat and stuck-together.

Oh - and everyone should sign this petition on libel law reform. And give to Haiti *. And go see A Prophet.

* OK - as Walm points out, give money to charity, not Haiti.