Kippers - the perfect marathon breakfast?

It's 10 days tomorrow until the Marathon of the North and I am at the point in the taper where the body feels a bit lethargic, doubts are creeping in and I'm itching to get to the start line and forget about Marathon training for a while.   Last week was a relatively low mileage week with just short of 50 miles in the bag (or the watch!).   Saturdays run was in the beautiful setting of Northumberland as we were away for a family wedding.   Brother in law Phil (Musgrave) arranged an early morning run and we met at 7am on the landing of the farmhouse we were staying in....8 miles of stunning scenery, deer, hares, hawks and lambs (lots and lots of lambs) were our company...8 miles of local roads and only one car...heaven!  Feeling smug about 50 miles being done for the week I checked out the stats on the dreaded Garmin...bugger....49.78 miles.    This usually bugs me and I had two choices...put the garmin on and run round the grounds of the farmhouse or round it up....needless to say I rounded it up but it reminded me of pre- garmin days when we used to estimate all of our runs.  I often wonder how accurate we were...My Monday night 10 milers at the club were possibly 9.5 miles or maybe they were 10.5 miles - who knows...who cares?  

A few people have made comments post London that the Garmin showed not 26.2 but 26.5 or 26.7....I haven't done London for some time but I'm sure my Garmin (had I worn one!) would have shown a similar distance as i weaved in and out in the early stages not to mention the weaving at the finish as my legs went a bit wibbly wobbly!

Are we all becoming too reliant on the GPS watches...?  Probably I guess!

I repeated the run the following morning and added an extra mile to make sure the excesses of the night before were worked out...Kippers followed for breakfast so wanted to build an appetite.   As it was the day of the London Marathon I was particularly keen to get a run in and this time came across human contact with an elderly gentleman walking his dog.   "if you speed up now you might make the start line" he shouted....blimey even in remote Northumberland people make funny comments about us runners....better than 118 or Run Forrest Run I suppose! 

I enjoyed my kipper from Craster!

Last night I made a return to the track for a local 3000m race.   Happy with my 4th place in 9:42.2 as I set a target of 9.54 for myself.   Happier still with the way that I was able to pick up the pace in the second half and pass the runner in front to finish 4th.   Brother in law Phil clocked an impressive 10:05.05.   I predict this year will see Phil out kick me in a race as he is showing a good turn of speed at the moment.  Training partner Jayne Parkin also had a great 3000m (and track debut) with 11:59.5.  Cutting it fine to make my target of a sub 12 but done all the same!

Results are below:

http://www.new-marske-harriers.co.uk/index.php/en/track-a-field-3/nysd

Well done to all who did the London Marathon...only managed to catch the highlights so far but massive well done to Claire Hallissey who took the last remaining marathon place for London 2012.   Also well done to my good friend Belgrave Harrier Louise Blizzard who completed her 18th London in a super fast 2:58.10 and was part of the winning team.  Well done Lou!  Lots of other people to mention but Good luck to Paul Cleasby (New Marske Harriers) and Mark Brown (NYMAC) who are running the Marathon of the North just two weeks after London..rather you than me!