Well as another year starts our minds turn to the goals we want to set ourselves for the up and coming year. As I realized last year, I didn't actually commit any of mine to paper, so it is understandable that they fell by the wayside. Having said that I did achieve a number of things and took myself out of my comfort zone, thanks to a last minute Thunder Run entry and the XC season. But I didn't pushed myself, in terms of pace, which is why I have been spending some time putting together my marathon training plan for London.
Last year a local marathon legend developed me a marathon plan which saw my achieve a goal of getting the qualifying time for London however, I seriously disliked the long rep's (5 minutes) and I started to loose a bit of my running mojo; I was just going through the motions which is never good.
So this time I have decided to create my one plan, using some of the excellent sessions from last years plan and adding some of the things I like to do as well to keep me engaged. I am going to be my own experiment and lets see what is going to happen!!
As for my goals, they are here , they do scare me a little but you need to do things that scare you at times, so here goes......
Yes I did, I was volunteering at parkrun so ran to parkrun on Christmas day, I ran to pick the car up on Boxing day and finally will be running a long run on Sunday with my fellow club mates.
Those who don't run say that we are mad, surely we should be be chilling out, taking time off having a rest, but what happens if this is our rest? I have still spent time with those that I love, I have been able to make my running functional incorporated it in to my daily life. So my running has had a purpose getting home from work or going to pick up the car after having a drink in the pub.
I was thinking this morning it is each to their own... I didn't get up at 2 am or 3 am to go
to the next sale neither did I spend Christmas day looking online at the Christmas sales, but I did get up and run so perhaps we are not so different after all.
As December roles around, I'm already thinking about next year's goals and what should they be. This got me reflecting on those goals I had set for this year and I can't actually find any!
I was convinced I had set some but it looks like I never committed them to blog paper. So, is this like the tree that falls in the forest if no one see's it does it make a sound? As I didn't write them down, was I really committed to them??
Ok so my unofficial targets were:
- Set a new PB for the Marathon
- Get a qualifying time for automatic entry in to London (GFA),
- Silver medal at the Potters arf, which means finishing under 1:45 on a very very hilly course
- Go under 23 minutes for Hanley parkrun
- Set a shiny new half marathon personal best
Did I achieve all or any of these?
Well, I set a new marathon PB of 3:43:28 ( goal 1) which gained automatic entry to Virgin Money London Marathon 2015 (goal 2). Read all about it here
The rest sort of fell by the wayside, but perhaps we have unearthed the reasons why I didn’t achieve them because I did commit them to my blog, which meant I had nothing to prove and no-one to hold me accountable!
So my the big question is do I a) recycle these goals for 2015 or b) set these to one side and think of some new ones? It is clear I need goals but perhaps it would be an idea to stage them, rather than setting them all out in one go, use them to build on and improve my running??
Best get my thinking cap on
