Rural Wiltshire was gripped in another week of sub-zero temperatures. The grass in our back garden seems to have been in a permafrost state for 2 weeks as it gets little or no sunshine. Kira pup acts as a snow plough eating snow, Megan & Tilly make paw prints, do their business then want to come in before ice ball form on their fur. At home we recorded minus 11c and minus 12c on two consecutive nights, but chickens still laying so they must be warm and happy in their hen house.

So this weeks activities were mainly indoors until the weekend when long runs had to be outside. Swimming, spinning, treadmill and turbo  featured a lot. Running off the spinning bike onto the treadmill allowed my first brick sessions.

Had a run with Chrissie Wellington,  well virtually anyway, I did my first session from her AudioFuel collection, 25 minutes interval running on treadmill – quite motivating and good music, will go unto 40 minute session next time.

Our planned 11 mile long slow run was cut to 8 miles as conditions were minus 5. My Camlebak tube froze, Karen was recovering from a cold, it was hard packed ice and crunchy uneven snow underfoot and it was just too damn cold ! We just couldn’t get a grip underfoot and the run was edging toward unsafe terriroty. The sun had little warming effect but suppose it provided us with some vitamin D. We completed an extra 4 miles 24 hours later in balmy 0c on Sunday morning !

First sports massage with Romy, local sport physiotherapist – a few tight spots to grimace over, but afterwards legs felt refreshed and loose, good job considering the hard cold runs on the weekend.

Caught up with Emma for fresh hand made pizza from the wood burning oven on the by-pass. Whatever topping you want so we went with meat feast, Texan Chicken and a Walk in the Garden (with extra chillies & olives). Delicious !

Dailymile weekly stats:
45 miles
8 hours of activities
9 workouts