Here comes the rain again

Here comes the rain again by leecolgate at Garmin Connect - Details

Although, admittedly, just as I got back from today's run and therefore not giving me any real justification to whinge.  Therefore I won't.

You may have noticed I took last week off completely.  Although this is only true for a given value of 'you', being people who have been following my blog.  On recent performance, this gives us a value of 'you' equal to 'me'.  But whatever.  I don't apologise for leaving anyone bereft of my sarcastic blithering for a week and guess it may have come as a relief (or will do in future) to anyone feeling compelled out of some sense of as-yet-undiscovered loyalty to read my drivel.

In the past, I have actually found these extended breaks in a long training plan can be advantageous.  They refresh me, renew my enthusiasm and in some cases even allow my body to develop hitherto unattained levels of performance, meaning I'm faster than I was when I was sticking slavishly to whatever plan I was following.  While this is not the case on this occasion, my performance has at least remained fairly consistent rather than plummeting off a cliff, which is also a possibility/risk.  Incidentally, did Formula 1 and Pirelli just come up with this terminology, or am I only now noticing it for the first time?  It's rather good.  As is the F1 championship this year.  Soooo good to see someone other than Vettel (I'm afraid I really can't bring myself to like him much) winning.  Alonso's home victory was particularly gratifying.

All the sessions I failed to complete last week were endurance ones, steady running for a period of time (one of them 10 minutes, which I'm not sure I would have bothered with anyway!).  So I've not missed any pace-enhancing interval or Fartlek runs.  There is one of these in for Thursday of this week.  I'm back on the horse and back on the case now, complete with new anti-chafe shorts as my old ones (and I do mean old, I bought them when I started training for the 2005 London marathon, in 2004!) wore through in an area that led to most unwelcome chafing.  The new ones are white and, it turns out, a bit see-through, so my policy of always wearing another layer over anything made of lycra is proving doubly worthwhile.

Finally, a question.  My other pre-occupation in recent months has been the search for a new job.  I have submitted a few applications through the 'aggregator sites', Jobsite and TotalJobs.  I always get a confirmation from the site concerned that my application has been submitted, but have never once got further confirmation from the recruiting agency or employer, or anything else for that matter.  Should I genuinely take that to mean that I'm a hopeless candidate and not wanted, or has anyone else out there had similarly poor results from using these sites and do they have any suspicions that they're not doing what they say they are?  It won't make that much difference to my self esteem, which barely exists at the moment anyway, but I would be interested to know.

More from me on Thursday.

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