I forgot to mention in my earlier entries what the selection criteria was for me to make the Commonwealth Games. The qualifying time for the 10,000m was 28.49 so firstly I had to run the time. Then after running the time I had to finish first at the national championships. I qualified by winning the national championships in a time of 28.40, which hit two birds with one stone. I out sprinted Keith Cullen who also ran the time but I found out later that although England can field three runners in each event they would not select Keith to run with me in Melbourne. It would have been nice to have to have Keith there as he is a very experienced athlete and one I could have learnt a lot from.

The hotel that we are staying in for our holding camp is very nice, the food here is very good and ideal for athletes. The only problem is it is easy to be tempted to eat too much. I am sharing a room with Dan Robinson (Marathon) and Luke Gunn (Steeplechase). Its interesting to see some of the bigger names in England athletics around and how they are just before a major championship.

I had planned to run my first session on Monday March 6th this is the third day of me being in Melbourne but I decided that I was still feeling the effects of jet lag and moved my session to Wednesday March 8th just to give myself a little more time to recover.

I am glad I did move the session to later as it went well. Everyday I feel I am getting a little better with the jet leg. I tried to monitor my heart rate on my easy distant runs but it was just so high and messed up for the first few days that I decided to give up with the heart rate monitor for now.

Running Log: Thursday March 9th

Dan Robinson, Luke Gunn, and myself decided to go watch a local track meet, which was being held opposite the MCG. This was an impressive meeting to watch mainly because we saw Craig Mottram of Australia run a national record in the 2000m, he went through the mile in 3.53! It was also good to see Nick McCormick finish in second place and not too far behind Mottram. I was also able to meet with some of my friends (Nick Willis, New Zealand and Nate Brennan, Canada) for the first time since being out in Melbourne. These two guys live four miles away from me in Michigan and I have become good friends with them over the last two years. I plan on doing my second session today March 11th down at the practice track, which is really impressive. The track is 12 lanes for sprinters and 8 lanes all the way around, there is also a nice 1200m trail that goes round the out side of the track that we use to warm up on. The weather is really hot here and seems to be warming up for this weekend so I have decided to wait until the evening to run my session in the hope that it has cooled down a bit.

Gavin

Is Craig Mottram running any events in the Games? 3:53 for the first mile! Good grief.

I hope the weather was not as hot as forecast - or at least you are getting used to it. I'm really looking forward to watching CG. It might even encourage me to get my trainers on and get out of the door myself.

Good luck

Just had a look, he's doing the 5,000 and 1,500 metres.

Hi Gavin, in one of your earlier posts you mentioned you do most of your distance runs at around 6.30 miling. What percentage of your milage would be done at this pace?