School boy errors.

I have been quite pleased with my training this week although I made a couple of school boy errors! I went out for a run on Monday evening which I found quite hard going. Now normally when I go out training on my own, I take my Ipod with me to listen to. I have a mixture of tracks on there mainly consisting of rock and heavy metal which I find quite motivational for training. On Monday however, I had forgotten to charge my Ipod and it had a flat battery. Sally kindly offered to lend me her Ipod and off I went for an 8 mile run listening to Take Thats greatest hits (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one!) - Hardly motivational. It would only have been slightly worse had it been Jedward's Ice Ice Baby on repeat. So the run was hard going but at least I will remember to charge the Ipod in future!

The second school boy error occurred yesterday. I decided to recce the Southern section of the Manx Mountain Marathon from the Round Table to Port Erin. I went with Sally and took two cars to Port Erin, left one there and drove back to the Round Table. Off we went and covered the 7.1 mile section in a reasonable time. I was quite pleased that this section of the route is relatively easy compared with the rest of the route although I'm sure trying to get up Bradda after covering the rest of the course will be a bit of an ordeal. On returning to the car in Port Erin and feeling rather pleased with myself, I suddenly realised I had left the keys in the car at the Round Table - How popular was I!! So the only option was to casually add on a few miles of road running from Port Erin, following the Parish route up Ballakillowey to the Sloc. Luckily, some kind souls in a camper van on their holidays from Liverpool gave me a lift the last 3 miles up the Sloc Road to the Round Table crossroads.

So lessons learned this week, charge the Ipod and don't forget the car keys!