Once you've done something as physically exerting and fitness oriented as Afritrex was its hard to take your foot off the gas and slow down....well it is for me anyway!

I need targets and I need goals and something to throw myself into, down time is wasted time as far as I'm concerned - sleep when you're dead my friend!

To fill the huge void left by the end of my Afritrex experience and now being unsure of exactly when I'll see Bre again as she's over in Vancouver and I'm in the UK, I had to set myself a goal and another personal challenge so I entered another couple of running events...and this time a little tougher than the normal marathon thing.

The beginning of May....apart from being the week I hope to be out in Aus for the next round of interviews, hosts the Three Forts Marathon which takes place up and down the South Downs, a range of chalk hills which stretch for nearly 100 miles across the south of England. Its 27 miles in length and climbs some 3450 feet over its length and will truly be a real test of my endurance and stamina.

If, and its a real 'if', I get through this one there's the Low Alpine Mountain Marathon or LAMM taking place in the north of Scotland at the beginning of June. This could either set me up for this type of event in the future.....or kill me! Its carried out with a partner (a good friend Bryan Smith) over two days, you carry your own tent, food and all supplies over the mountains of the Scottish Highlands passing checkpoints, hopefully, with your own careful orienteering skills. And no GPS's are allowed! Dang it!

Well I'd better get off the couch then and do some real training then if I seriously want to finish these gruelling mental and physical tests....first stop and find a few smaller races to enter and hit the local rural roads around Ropley as much as possible. Add to that the swimming I do every morning before work and hopefully my CV will be ready for these tougher events.

My good friend Alan Jones has run the Reading Half Marathon for the last 10 years (maybe even more!) and when he told me about a a friend who'd dropped out I jumped at the chance to fill their place....finally something to aim for!

Well I'm now sitting here at the computer with legs feeling great after a beasting on the roads of Reading yesterday and an awesome feeling inside as I finished the race with very little training and preparation.

Now I've completed a distance you didn't think was possible in the first place, say a half marathon 5 years ago, or a full marathon 4 years ago....or even an ultra double marathon last year, I feel I've done them and need to keep pushing further. So do I run further, say 60 miles or do I instead try and beat my personal best times for these events!?!? Reading would be the first time I'd actually raced against a clock rather than just to finish the race.

What an amazing start to the day too,  perfect weather if a little cold; Alan, his daughter Vicky and I assembled on the start line, or as close as we could get, and joined the other 18,000 runners preparing for the off. Bang went the start gun and off I went again, the great feeling of plodding through another event surging through my veins and I took up the idea in my mind of trying to go out fast - nbot so fast as to kill myself early, but fast enough to keep in front of the 1hr 40min pacemaker at least.

The first half of the race went without problems and I was really enjoying myself slowly working my way up the field. I decided to latch onto the back of another runner who was going at a decent pace and looked comfortable and relaxed, we wound our way through the field avoiding the stray water bottles which lined the course at intervals and past the 10 mile marker onto the deperessing long straight back towards the finish area at the Madjeski Stadium in the distance.

What a plod that last bit is, 2 miles of closed dual carriageway and then they lead you back onto yourself with the runners in front of you that much closer to the finish than you until finally you climb the final short hill, round the final side of the stadium and into the centre of the arena with a cheering, screaming crown welcoming you in....

....I looked up and the clock read 1hr35mins, I was two mins inside my time and decided to open up my step and sprint the final 200m to the finish using the very last of my effort and energies. I swaggered over the line and felt a huge sense of relief as I'd actually broken my personal best by a good distance, nearly 4mins 30secs when the final chip time came through. A very respectable 1hr 33mins!!!

MASSIVE WAHOOS ALL ROUND!! Bre would love that

So its onto the next target, the beginning of May and the Three Forts challenge, but there's a long way to go to be fit enough for that....back to the roads of Ropley then.

Oh and here's a little pic of the UK entrants for the BEST JOB outside Big Ben a few days ago.....

Hope life is good wherever you may be, keep fingers crossed for Thursday night at 11.59pm ok!!

Ben