After the disappointment of the Johnny Kipps and the late start, it was another busy week - Jessica turned 7 on Tuesday and so there was the party to go to (Kirsty forgot the jelly & ice cream until too late in the day!), before the Wednesday night and the first 5km race of the Series. I went to a course at Castle Combe and so only arrived at 7pm - it was nice to see that the others coped so well without me (a sign of things to come, with luck!). Despite road works at Ilchester and a bad crash that closed the A303 at Wincanton, we had 170 runners turn out - good win for Ben Tickner, and apologies to Rose Cullimore for making all of the runners sing Happy Birthday to her on the start line. The whole thing went smoothly, with results up quickly, all the runners leaving early - apart from the chap who'd locked his keys in the car and with whom we waited until 9 for the AA to sort him out (though back to the Arrow in time to watch Spurs beat the Arsenal!)

Pub run on Thursday was good, over at Queen's Head at Milborne Port, running with Paul and Josh Price for the first two miles at Josh's pace - and then "20 minutes" which ended up being 5 miles at race pace with Pricer - glad he was taking it easy in the build up to London! Good Club meal at the Thai on Friday night, before a cracking day with Lynda at the Hawk Conservancy on Saturday - photos of http://picasaweb.google.com/MartinChaffey - where we recreated our first day out together (minus the birthday candles, and substituting fish &chips for the chinese we had that first day!)

Sunday was the Pen Selwood 10km and another disappointing run - aiming for 51 minutes, starting out as a social run with Nigel Moysey but struggling from early on - found John Cowley of the Doddlers at 5km, and he was strugggling as well, so we ran round together. New shoes started biting and blistering from 6km onwards and whilst the hills weren't as bad as forewarned, walking up all of them probably helped this - why can't I run in races like I do on Tuesdays?! Time of 54m30something not great - must try harder at next one; unfortunately the next one is the 11 mile, very hilly Red Kite Challenge!

Back to normal at last night's Club run - good run leading a group of 19 on the 5 mile course around Chilthorne and back through Thorne Lane, and stormed the hills, enjoyed the run - though much of run was spent discussing Paul McNeill's haircut, administered by Donna with a pair of donkey shears!