1500m

It's midnight by the sea in Riccione, in Italy's Adriatic riviera, but guess who's too excited to sleep...

Patty Murray just got the bronze in the women's 40-44 age group world championship, running out of her socks at sub-5-minute mile pace -- the fastest she's run since high school, 25 years ago. What an inspiration!

Alan Webb describes coming eighth in the 1500m world championship as "a colossal breakdown".

Huh? The race was won by new American citizen Bernard Legat (born in Kenya and a member of the famed Nandi tribe). Webb was 0.95 seconds behind !

If Alan Webb wins the metric mile at the world track championships in Osaka tomorrow, then I'm looking forward to hearing the sound of hats, if not running shoes, being eaten.

I only ask because tonight I raced straight off the sofa -- and didn't do too badly.

Over the last few days I've been engaged in an ongoing "workshop" about the mental/emotional and yes spiritual blocks to running fast -- the head stuff. It's challenging, exhausting work digging out the roots of my current "fear of discomfort". Yesterday's one-on-one session with coach Bobby McGee was a corker. And my wife Abby gets to run the follow-up. Heh heh. Good job she is a therapist, what?

Since starting training with Pilates teacher Richard Rossiter last year to fix my back and get some ab muscles, I've learnt a lot of new stuff about my body. For instance, I never knew I couldn't fully straighten my right knee. Richard's classical Pilates, which often reminds me of circuit training and includes resistance work such as Sumo squats with a barbell, is gradually "calling my body to order". In the process, I get to experience a variety of transient aches and pains as muscles, tendons and ligaments strengthen, stretch and relaign. Lately, it's been this pain in my butt.