Richard Belton

Well, where do I begin? I don’t fully know what to say, but feel writing my thoughts down will help me to understand and accept what has happened. I was going to write about my performance at the Lancs XC Champs last weekend, or about my training, but these kind of things all seem pretty trivial now.

13 months ago, our good friend Pistol Pete Holmes was taken from us in such tragic circumstances. Such a wonderful man, who anyone would be proud to say they were friends with. He was living his dream and had so much to offer the world. This really stopped me, along with so many others in Loughborough and beyond, in our tracks. So just over a year on, and it happens again. Another great young man, taken from us far too young. Richard Belton or just Belton to those who knew him had so much to look forward to. He had just taken up a new role within British Triathlon, leaving British Volleyball to take on this new role. However it was during a volleyball game yesterday evening with his friends that this tragic incident happened.

My memories of Rich were of running with him, especially this year on a Tuesday night ‘tempo’ where he had to stop with stomach cramps but urged me to keep going. I also remember going out riding with him and Vardy and them showing me new cycling routes. My other prominent memory of Belton or Seal as we nicknamed him was at the Loughborough Christmas Ball in my first year, which was undoubtedly my favourite. Spending time with him and his closer friends at the pre-ball jam in his house is something I will never forget.

I am running for Loughborough tomorrow in the Birmingham League, where I shall be wearing a black ribbon on my African Violet vest, with my run being dedicated to him. My thoughts are with his family and close friends.

RIP Belton xx

"Consistency is the key"

So here we are in 2011. It always seems to amaze everyone how fast a year goes by, 365 days, 52 weeks or 12 months. Where does it all go? How much of it do we waste?

Well I did this whole evaluation phase at the beginning of September, as I'm sure a lot of athletes do. I had just got back from a 'lads' holiday in Bulgaria, and was as far from an athlete as you could possibly be (the only way you could tell I was an athlete was the fact I read 'Running with the Buffaloes' whilst I was there). I had come back 1.5 stone overweight, still injured and with a horrendous lifestyle. I also decided that the last year of my life had been quite wasteful, and so I decided it was time for a change. I don't know how much the book I was reading affected my change in attitude, but I'm sure it was a big part of it. I felt all of a sudden as if I had a fresh focus and desire to try and fulfil my potential. 

Now when I say I changed things, I don't just mean I changed the odd thing here and then, I mean whole-scale changes to the way I live my life. The root of the problems was being injured, so I sought out the best physio I could find in order to try and put an end to my 3 year injury nightmare. This man was to be Duncan Mason. A few friends had mentioned him to me in the past, and so I decided it was time to take their advice, get down to Manchester and get myself sorted. Next my sleeping patterns had to change. Going to bed at 5am and not getting up until 1pm is not the lifestyle of someone who wants to get the most out of their athletics. This inevitably meant night’s out had to be severely cut back and in came 11pm bedtimes. Next to change was my diet. Carrying an extra stone and a half, or in real terms 9 bags of sugar is far from ideal!! I can only imagine the stress that was putting on my body, trying to run carrying all that weight and this can’t have helped my injuries. Finally my training needed a drastic upheaval, or more accurately, my approach to it had to change. Coming back from an injury and trying to get yourself fit for a big race 4 weeks later is just not conducive to getting the best out of yourself or establishing any kind of consistency in your training. I feel I am quite clued up on how to train, just through speaking to knowledgeable people and reading Lydiard et al's methods, so why wasn't I putting all this into practice? After all, "consistency is the key".

Within two weeks I felt like I was back on the rails to some degree. I had seen Duncan twice, and he had found the root of my injuries and set about fixing them. Exercises and treatment were the answer and I was soon back doing some easy running. My lifestyle was soon back to what it used to be before I went to Uni, with normal sleeping patterns and a good healthy balance of home cooked food courtesy of mum. And finally I spoke to my good friend Tom Cornthwaite, and we agreed it would be best that he oversaw all of my training again, just like when I had my successes on the Mountains. 

So here we are just over 3 months later and I feel like a different person. Touch wood, I have had no major injury problems during this time, but continue to see Duncan (who has worked wonders with me and I would highly recommend him) in order to keep on top of any niggles and potential injuries. He recommends all his patients do this, such as Andi Jones, Dave and Andy Norman and Michelle Ross-Cope to name but a few. My lifestyle is still pretty good, and I am also working harder at University, which is obviously important, this being my final year. My diet is much better too. I made a pact with Nathan Bibby one night back in October that we would give up chocolate, cake, biscuits, sweets and crisps until Christmas. Although I used ice-cream (Ben & Jerry’s half baked to be precise) as a loop-hole, we both stuck at it, and this has massively helped with my bid to get back towards my best racing weight. I have realised it is much harder to lose weight than to put it on, so I won’t be ‘bingeing’ again in a hurry. So at 10.5 stone I have lost about a stone, and so only have a few pounds to go to be at my optimum weight!

On the training front, with Tom’s help, things are moving in the right direction, and I have even raced 3 times (would have been 4 without all this snow!). But that is another story in itself and shall have to wait for another day (hopefully a bit sooner than the 7 months since my last blog!)

Thanks for reading and I hope you like the new Runners Blogs site,

Pete

Another Week Under the Belt

So, as the blog title suggests I am still in one piece (*touches wood*). Since Portugal training has been virtually non-existent and this is very frustrating as I believe I was in pretty decent shape. The lastest in my long list of injuries started on the day of the Inter-Counties. I did a tempo early that morning with James Fairbourn and it went pretty well. At this point I was still on the comeback from tearing my calf. I had no immediate reaction until I stepped out of the car at the Inter-Counties and my Achilles just felt really tight and sore. However like the idiot I am, I still ran around all afternoon cheering people on and just hoping it was just a bit tight. Well it wasn’t and so I didn’t run for a while, but then was back bit part running when we left for Portugal. This trend continued in Portugal where I would run for 2-3days and then take a day or two off to try and let it settle again. This is obviously not clever, but I was out there to train and so this is what I set out to do. I thought I had turned the corner and managed a solid session with Pete Street, Nathan Bibby and Kris Bibby consisting of 1k, 800, 600, 4x400m.

However 2 days later the problem was back and worse than ever. The pain wasn’t directly on my Achilles and most the time didn’t really affect my Achilles. The pain was more to the base of my heel, just on the outside of my left Achilles. So anyway I didn’t run for about 4 weeks and then finally Cat Riley got to the bottom of the problem the first time I saw her. It turned out the Sub-Talor Joint in my foot was completely locked up, and so when my foot landed the force was not being distributed evenly therefore causing me problems. A couple of sessions loosening off my calf, soleus and peronial tendon, and mobilizing the joint in my foot got me back running. Since then I have come back very sensibly, running every other day for 10 days or so and then increasing the number and length of my runs. Saturday saw my first proper track session, done at home with Tom Cornthwaite. The weather was horrible but I was glad to be just back running on the track! I did 6x300m off 100m jog and I haven’t felt lactic like it for 3 years!! It really was a shock to the system! In the evening I watched the Grand Prix at Sportscity and it was great to see a lot of good friends running well. I can’t really mention everyone but want to mention Alex Hains’ run! He has missed 2 years of running since coming back from America, and in his first season back went out and ran  13.57!! Great job Hainsy!

The past week hasn’t been much fun apart from the return to proper running, as I have been revising hard. I went home Wednesday to Saturday to see my family and managed to get myself a job for the summer, which is very handy! Last night I went out for a couple of casual drinks with all the Loughborough boys, which was a welcome break from revision. However I am back on it today, and so will have to end today’s blog here. Until next time.....

Back by popular demand/return from injury!

Many people were (rightly) saddened by the abrupt end to my blogging when I was out in Portugal. I can only apologise for this, and have no excuse other than sheer laziness.  I shall start by summing up the whole trip in a word; amazing! I can honestly say I had the time of my life for the 3 and a half weeks I was out there and would jump at the chance to go back. I met some really cool people out there and pretty much just had a ball. The training was also going fairly well until the last week when I didn’t run a step. This trend unfortunately continued for the best part of 3 weeks after my return, but I will go into that at a later date....

Highlights of the trip:

• Death Day has to be up there... copious amounts of chocolate after being without it for a month was pretty dreamy!
  
• BIG Saturday night out! If I say 7 very close mates all arrived home to the same house at completely different times, each with their own story to tell of the nights proceedings, then that should sum up how good a night it was! (and that’s not to mention some of us running at 6.30am pre-sleep!)

• Gayhouse. Our house was given this label for some unknown reason, but unfortunately we failed to live up to our reputation!
  

• Karaoke sessions in Rui’s Bar never went unloved.
  
  
• Horrible tanning sessions.
  

• And Mariani getting himself a girlfriend!!!

Since returning home, I have been pretty snowed under with 3 pieces of coursework to start and finish, and now my first exam tomorrow! Any excuse to get out of revision! I shall try and be more regular with my updates from now on, and will try and write later in the week detailing my latest in a long line of comebacks!

Until then xx

GayHouse

Day 6 - Death Day

Finally the arrival of Easter Sunday, and the end of lent. Pete Street and I had already agreed to go for Chocolate Fudge Cake after our run and I couldn’t wait. I saw Leslie and Tom this morning before my run, and they loosened off my IT band and Peronial, and then I set off with the lads. My IT-Band hurt for the whole hour I ran, but it was a welcome relief from pain in my Achilles area. I stretched and iced as soon as I got back before getting changed and going to Bar O Cafe for our fudge cake! Boy it was good and I even had a bar of Milka afterwards. Pete and I decided that we weren’t craving that badly as it has been so long, and so are pretty much going to go back on the same diet, although not quite as strict. I absolutely love chocolate, but I get addicted and eat way too much, so if I’m trying to keep my weight down its probably best I don’t have any at all! The rest of the afternoon was spent tanning it up and socialising around the pool. At around 6, Kate Hindle, Lucy Dowsett, Becky Gough and I did a bit of core and stretching on the grass by the pool. I really had to man up, as girls are always so much better at core!

I got back to the villa at 5.30, and had to get ready in 30mins (which is quick for me) as me and my brother were meeting my parents for a meal. They came out here yesterday, and are staying in a gorgeous hotel right on the beach. It was a good half an hour walk down to the hotel, but it was really nice to see them! We got the extra surprise of a HUGE Easter egg in the hotel foyer that you could help yourself to! After a catch up and a drink in their room, we wandered into the Marina to find somewhere to eat. My parents had been given a recommendation and so we tried it out. The restaurant  was called the Abroa, and the fish steaks I had were very good. We then went for an ice cream, no prizes for guessing I went for chocolate! Chris and I then walked home, and I ate the mini-eggs and crème egg my mum had brought out for me! Today really was a death day!

Day 5 - BBQ

Today saw the second session of our trip. With the Gandyman now out here in Portugal it would definitely be a session where people would try to impress, with BUCS looming on the horizon, and George only being here for a week. Those of us doing the 5k session started at 10, with a 2k rep at 5k pace, just like on Tuesday. 10 minutes later the main session started, which was 700, 200, 600, 200, 500, 200, 400 all off 90sec recovery, with the reps getting faster throughout the session. Unfortunately for me, my heel wasn’t feeling too great, and so I had to stop after the 2k. I was pretty down about this, but George said not to worry about it and just get ready for Tuesday (the next session). I stayed around and stretched whilst the rest of the guys did the session, Emery in particular running very well. The track was rammed this morning, with around 7+ groups training on it, as it closes at 12 on a Saturday. At 10 a few of John Nuttall’s group and some of the Liverpool lads were doing a huge volume session, whilst we also saw Phil Nicholls doing what looked like 400’s and Ben Moreau doing some longer reps. At 11 Liz McColgan’s group were doing 800’s and a small but high quality group from Blackburn (my brother, Alison Leonard, Karl Billington and Anthony Hauserman) were doing 300’s.

As soon as I got back, I went to see Leslie and Tom for a bit of ‘emergency treatment’ to see if they could sort my heel out. There weren’t massaging today as it is their rest day, so I was very lucky that they agreed to take a quick look at me. Between them they loosened off my IT-Band and Peronial Tendon, and this really seemed to help the pain in my heel straight away. I cannot say how thankful I was and I really do owe them one! After the treatment I got lunch whilst watching the United-Chelsea game. This was always going to be horribly tense as Mariani is a Chelsea fan, and Fairbourn a big United fan (oh and Griff pretends he’s a big United fan!). We all know the result, but it didn’t quite kill the atmosphere in the villa as much as I anticipated for...

Earlier on in the week we were invited to the 9 person L’boro villa down by the track for a BBQ. We couldn’t pass up on this offer, and so rocked up at 6pm with all our food. Everyone who has come away with L’boro was there, and despite the wait for food (obviously going to happen when catering for over 30 people) it was good. I smashed 2 burgers and a couple of sausages along with a bit of the pasta that Besty and the girls had laid on! This was most definitely the most full I have been since coming out here! Our house left quite early however, as we wanted to go down to the Marina. We watched the David Haye fight in Figo’s bar, with a large Liverpool AC contingency, before heading on to Rui’s Karaoke bar again. The DJ tonight was awful, which ruined it, as he had the wrong backing tracks playing and all sorts. The company was great but it really was a shambles which got worse when a John Smiths shandy set me back 5 euro’s 50! Never again!

Day 4 – “a successful track season would now just be an added bonus!”

After a relatively late night last night, most of our house chose to lie in. Fairbourn was out early for an easy run, but personally I didn’t get up until 10am. With no running today, I was in no rush to really do anything. After breakfast we went to the bar for a coffee but not being a coffee drinker I soon hit the pool for an hour to catch some more rays. We had lunch just after 1pm, and then headed down to the beach. The beach is about a 15 minute walk away, and a massive group had already set off down there when we left. Emery, Griff, Mariani and I walked down to the beach with Nathan Bibby and a group of girls from Birmingham. I knew half of them before the trip, and met a few of the others by the pool yesterday, but the lads didn’t know any of them, so it was good to just get to meet some new people and socialise. When we arrived at the beach, we messed about with a Nerf and football for a bit and I had a cheeky dip in the sea. Things then got a bit more serious with a mass rounder’s game. It must have been about 15-a-side, with groups from Preston/Blackburn, Loughborough and Birmingham all involved! This was a great laugh and of course, I was on the winning team! As Pete Street and I discussed afterwards, a successful track season would now just be an added bonus!

Mariani and his little friend!

Mariani and I left the beach at 4.40, just before the rest, as we had to get to the supermarket as we were on cooking duty tonight. We were worried it closed at 5 being Good Friday, but it didn’t actually close till 8, which was annoying as we could have squeezed in a little more tanning time! Anyway we purchased just over 1kg of diced beef, some veg, soy sauce and rice. As you can probably guess we decided to make a Stir-Fry. The others arrived back just after us, and I then went to the pool (or as Shane just corrected me, tanning salon) with Fairbourn in order to stretch to try and improve and yesterday’s diagnosed horrendous flexibility. Once that was done, Mariani and I started to prepare the evening meal. The meal turned out ok and there was enough to go round, which was our biggest worry, having never cooked for 7 people before. The rest of the evening was very uneventful, as I think we all just wanted to get to bed in anticipation of tomorrow morning’s session.

Day 3 – “key tanning day!”

As I said in my blog yesterday, today would see the earliest start on the trip so far, as we all decided to run together at 8am. This was a relative luxury though, as I run before 7 sometimes when in Loughborough. I therefore woke up at 7.35 in order to allow time to foam roll and stretch before the run given the state of my Achilles yesterday. This really didn’t help that much though. Emery didn’t get up as stated, sticking to his guns that he never runs on a Thursday morning! Despite the beautiful run around the Golf Course, my Achilles just didn’t feel right, and so I just did 30mins with Mariani, whilst Seb, Fairbourn, Shane and Dave Howe continued and got an hour in.

The weather was gorgeous today and so this became my key tanning day! I hit the pool at around 10am with Griff, whilst the rest went for a coffee. They then joined us an hour or two later. Most the girls in our group were sunbathing too, and even Dolly (Alistair Donaldson) joined us mid-morning! Dolly is George’s new assistant coach, and being the 1^st of April, he got well and truly fooled! At present Dolly is living in the UKA endurance house in Loughborough whilst he finds his own place. Becky Lyne is still there, as she is going to Fount Romeu next week, and she called Alistair telling him his car had been broken in too! Becky is usually quite sensible, and so Dolly bought this for a few hours!!! He was literally crapping himself!

Anyway at we all went back to the villa to have lunch at around 1pm, and get a break from the sun. However I was back out there at 2, in order to make the most of this key tanning day before my massage at 4.35. Heather see’s Leslie, when she comes to Loughborough every fortnight, and she always says how good she is. Her assistant Tom has come out to Portugal with her this year and he was massaging me. I said to a couple of the guys before I went that I wanted a lot of pain to try and sort my legs out! Well I got just that. Tom tried to loosen everything off, in order to relieve the strain on my Achilles. We established that I am tight absolutely everywhere up my left side, probably the reason my Achilles is so sore. Having never had my IT Bands or Glutes massaged before I knew this would be bad, as I knew they were tight. Let’s just say it really was not pleasant!! Tom then stretched me off, and I really did feel so much better straight away. I have booked another session on Wednesday to pretty much just do the same thing.

 Today was Shane’s Birthday and so we all decided to head down to the Marina for a meal. We all got ready and set off down there at just after 7. The place we ate did a carvery, however I went for a Steak and Guinness pie. After the meal we watched the Liverpool game in “Rui’s Sports Bar”, and after the game we got involved in some Karaoke. There was no way I was going to have a go, but Shane and Seb did an interesting Roxanne cover, whilst George/Gandy/G-man/GG got involved with a bit of Elvis! Sensible Emery and I headed back at just before midnight leaving just Shane and Seb to carry on singing, as the others had already gone back. Hopefully tomorrow’s weather will be as good as today, so I can once again optimize my tanning time on rest day.

N.B – I have been trying my best to take lots of pictures but I forgot to bring my usb cable. I am hoping to get hold of one on Saturday so that I can add my pictures to the blog....

Day 2

Last night we agreed to meet some of the lads from Preston at 10am outside the supermarket for our morning run. Wednesday usually means a medium to long run and today was no different, just in the much more pleasant Portuguese climate. Myself, Mariani and Emery met with Pete Street, Nathan Bibby, Stephen Bennett and a few more the Preston gang and set out on our way to the cross country course at Alfamar. I believe this was used for the World Cross in the 90’s?! Anyway we met another large group from Loughborough and Liverpool on route and so a huge group of around 40 of us made our way along the trails to the cross country course. The run was very pleasant and I ended up doing 55mins with just mild discomfort in the heel area when I stopped. When I got back, Bennett showed me where to sign up for a massage with Leslie (the OCWK masseuse) and then we stretched by the pool, before icing our legs. I then went back to villa, showered and had brunch consisting of museli, a banana and two marmalade rolls. I am trying really hard when I am out here to lose some weight, as I am currently close to half a stone over racing weight. The weight should come off naturally in the heat, but I am being careful to eat enough but not too much in order to help this process along. So far I think I have found a nice balance.

Last night I labelled today as a key tanning day, but unfortunately the weather was a bit overcast, and so sun-bathing wasn’t a great option... So instead Fairbourn and I went down to the bar and used the internet for a couple of hours. We then spent the rest of the afternoon playing Chinese Poker and Fifa. In Seb’s case he spent most of the afternoon playing Championship Manager on his Ipod Touch, presumably trying to broaden his football knowledge! At 5pm most of us trained again, with Shane doing another 60mins, Fairbourn 45 and Emery 20 whilst Seb and Mariani did nothing. When Emery got back, Griff and I joined him to do some core and stretching out on the grass. Shane cooked for us tonight, and came up with a little surprise. For everyone else the chocolate cake he made for desert was a pleasant surprise, but not so much for me! I have given up basically all nice things for lent, Chocolate, Cake, Sweets and Biscuits..... All I can say is I cannot wait for Sunday! Anyway he made a tuna, pasta and sweet corn dish in a creamy onion sauce, which went down a treat. I finished it off with a coconut yoghurt, whilst everyone else smashed the chocolate cake! We then went back to the bar to watch the Arsenal game, which wasn’t actually on (it was the Inter game instead) so we just used the internet and debated over whether Phil Hinch should have been picked for the World Cross. Whilst we were there I had a chat with Heather (my girlfriend) on Skype and she seemed pleased to hear from me!

Sensible Emery 'ladding' it up!

We got back to catch the last 5 minutes of the Arsenal game and then played a little more Chinese Poker. During the game, when discussing the hierarchy of Queen’s, Seb came out with the quote of the day; “That’s like saying the Queen of England is more important than the Queen of Scotland”. On that note we all hit the sack, in anticipation of tomorrow morning’s 8am run. I am hopeful we can run on the golf course, whilst Emery insists he will not be out of bed to join us! We shall see....

Day 1

So Day 1 started with a nice lie in, after the late night arrival last night. I was the only athlete ‘dedicated’ enough to get out the door for a morning run. I just did a very casual 15mins in order to get my bearings, but mainly to test my Achilles before the session in the evening. On Sunday, my Achilles insertion really started to hurt after 60mins but I was 10mins away from the house and so had to carry on running. It was very sore after that, but luckily I had a rest day scheduled the day after. Anyway my heel/Achilles insertion area felt fine, and so I was optimistic about the session in the evening. It was nice to bump into a few familiar faces while I was out, including Andy Bibby, Laura Park and Ricky Soos.

After getting back to the apartment, grabbing some breakfast and a quick shower, we all headed out for a wander around Vilamoura. We paid the track a quick visit, along with the marina and the supermarket. We got all the essentials from the supermarket and decided we would cook in two’s to minimize the amount of time we would each spend in the kitchen. Emery and Griff decided they would cook first, and so used the communal funds to buy the evening meal.

We got back to apartment around 1pm and had lunch. We then got a knock on the door, and Shane Kerr, our 7^th housemate arrived. He thought his flight from Belfast was yesterday, but it turned out to be today so he arrived a day late! Anyway it had been a while since we had all seen him (as he graduated in the summer) and so it was good to have a catch up.

The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing about as we had our first session at 5pm. We warmed up at 4.30, by running the scenic route to the track and then did the usual stretches, drills and strides. There were two sessions from which we had the choice and these consisted of:

1500m Group: 1200m (10mins recovery to jog to the hills) 4 sets of a 30sec hill, a 40sec hill and a 20sec hill all off a jog recovery. There was then a further 10mins to jog back to the track before 2x600m off a 200m jog.

5k Group: Virtually the same session but just a 2k rep to start instead of 1200m and then a 1200m rep to finish, in place of the 600’s.

Unfortunately Griff is struggling with a sore Achilles, and so just went for a 15min jog. Seb and I are also coming back from injury, and so we did a slightly different session, 2k (5mins recov) 2x800m (2mins recovery) and then 2x200m strides. We were just easing into running on the track again, hence the very light session! Everyone seemed to have a good first session out here, and from a personal point of view I was pretty pleased I could run 5.56 for the 2k without pushing, so I must still be reasonably fit.

The evening was a very chilled out affair. After we had all showered, we all ate a great first meal of Spag Bol, prepared by Emery and Griff. We then went to the bar 100m from our door, and watched the United game on TV. Fairbourn threw his toys out the pram when Ollic coasted past the United defence to put them in the lead, which was quite an amusing end to the day!