What a difference a month can make. Back in August, I had some bad news that affected me both physically and emotionally, resulting in a couple of DNFs and DNS with my race plans. Not only did my racing stop, but also my training, and it took several days for me to get back on track and find a focus. I've always found running and training much easier if I have a goal, and so to help regain that motivation for running again, I entered some races with full intentions of racing and training short rather than long like I normally do. For the past couple of weeks, long 2 hour + runs have gone out of the window in favour of shorter tempo runs and a bit of speed work - along with plenty of hills. The longest run I've done is around 10 miles and that's how it's going to stay - at least until the new year when I'll decide on a half marathon target and take things from there. For now though, it's a couple of 10k races and a few 5 milers, including the local cross cou...