Going into the British Masters championship I'd tweaked my hamstring. This developed into a full-blown left buttock muscular arrest. After the race I was walking with a limp for two days. Given I was doomed to sitting in an aircraft seat for 8 hours, I consulted my Inner Coach and was given the week off.

Not running for eight days was, surprisingly, not at all difficult. But it didn't seem to do much good. My first day back on the legs was Tuesday at the track, where a series of gentle 100s and 50s just to see what was working revealed that the left leg still doesn't want to play.

Ever seen a sprinter with a limp? Well you would have done in the final 200m or so of the the British championship 5k. That was me... with that dying effort I passed the then third-placed guy and got myself a bronze medal.

The cold wind was appalling; judging by previous years I needed a 17:00 or better to get a place, but 18:15 did the job. We were all slowed by a demon headwind on what was supposed to be the fastest part of the course. Geeze, all that way to sea level and not even a PR to show for it!!

'Carnival fever grips town' reads the local paper headline...

..er...no sign of it that I can see, unless it is that special, dead-pan, stoic British type 'fever', or they're keeping it indoors until tomorrow.

Of course, the weather doesn't help. Cold, windy, grey - and pouring with rain.Forecast says it will be brighter tomorrow with just a chance of rain. There is so much oxygen in the air I don't know what to do with it.

If there was a British Masters championship 5k section for runners with one leg, I think I would switch my entry.

I was feeling sick, tired and weak when I got to Potts Field for a key final track workout before heading to England for the British Championship 5k for Old Gits who Really Should Know Better.

Ancient Nemea to host 2008 Olympic-like summer games

By Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 04 June 2008

Just as the official Summer Olympics get underway in Beijing on June 21, an ancient athletic stadium at a UC Berkeley archaeological site in Greece that was home to the original Panhellenic Games will once again come alive with competition, writes Kathleen Maclay of the University of California at Berkeley.

The plan was to get up at 3am on Sunday to drive 2 hours to the spectacular Garden of the Gods 10-miler, race 7 in this year's 16-race Colorado Runner Racing Seies.

But common sense - actually tiredness - prevailed, and instead I found myself chasing glory instead of series points as a late entry in the Sunrise Stampede at Longmont. The race was on Saturday, a mere 30 minutes up the road, and was TWO miles instead of ten.

"I'll teach me", is the phrase that comes to mind :)

I was upset enough about what I felt was a poor performance in the mile on Sunday, that instead of awarding myself ice cream and the rest of the day off, I took myself out for a punishment run. Abby and a friend visiting us from England were doing some of the Boulder 360, which is a 20-mile (or so) "citizens" bike ride on some gorgeous trails round the city. My original plan was to ride with them; I decided to run.

Honest, it wasn't just me who came away dissatisfed from this race.

The course looked fast: straight out for half a mile from the Capitol Building in downtown Denver, slightly uphill, but not so's you'd really notice; two right-angled turns then slightly downhill all the way to the finish with a minor lump inside the last 100 to the line. But it turned out to be slow.

So "slow" that I can only claim "job done", getting under 5:30. No "very pleased" 5:20 and no ecstatic sub 5:15. Worse still, I "should have" won :)

I didn't think the flying-downhill lessons of the Greenland Trail 8-miler would come in handy for a 5k race, but little did I know that about two-thirds of the Cottonwood Classic 5k course spins gradually downhill. Not only that, but there were some groovy fast corners, too.

Cottonwood was the sixth race in the 16-race Colorado Runner Racing Series, and I'd taken a risk by missing number 5, the Colorado Half-Marathon in Fort Collins a couple of weeks ago. Luckily, I went into Cottonwood still leading the Male 55-59 overall points table and I was gunning for an 18:30.