"Monzambano"

It's been a great last couple of weeks with a summer holiday break just south of Peschiera on Italy's Lake Garda. I managed to get in half a dozen runs of up to an hour each but these had to be early morning before 7.3oam as the sun rose and the temperature reached the mid 30's. There was plenty of flat steady running along the River Mincio as it winds its way to the Po plus the network of canals that support the acres of vineyards for the famous Bardolino wine. But the best runs were those that ran up to the hill towns around Monzambano & Salionze neither of which is geared to tourists and certainly wasn't used to seeing runners at such an early hour!

The family had a fantastic holiday and it was great to relax by the olympic sized pool occasionally cooling off with a couple of lengths. It was also the opportunity to go to Verona, home of the famous opera and also to take a boat across the Lake to Bardolino & Desenzano a small sleepy town (where Jessica Ennis achieved the pentathlon 2009 world leading score earlier in the season). Knowing this it was great to then get home and watch an amazing week of world class athletics including Jess and the rest of the GB team.

My return to faster paced training has really suffered from a couple of easy weeks and Tuesday's track session of 12 x 400m was the toughest for a long time, however I did manage a 77 second final 400. Fortunately there are only a couple of track fixtures left to the end of the season but hopefully I can sharpen up enough to end the season positively.

Annual mileage 801