My take on 2018

It's been a funny old year, it started with me not running at all during January😏and has finished with me running every day in December, with a grand total of 135😮

This year I decided to participate in the advent run for December deciding that running every day up to the 25th sounded achievable.  Then, of course, there is the Christmas Day parkrun, next running to pick the car up on Boxing Day and then before you know it there is only 5 days to go and it would be a shame to miss out on running every day for a month.  

  

December, I have clocked my highest mileage month for the year; the miles have not been quick by my previous standards (btw they were never that quick but quicker than now).  People keep asking if I have turned a corner with my running and I’m really not too sure, I do enjoy it more now so perhaps I have.

The BIG question did I achieve have achieved any of my pre-marathon training plan goals?  

• Run 4/5 times a week,  
• A 10-mile run at\za least once 
• Run over 25 miles a week consistently 👍( I think the advent run really helped with that one!)

Looking back over the year and although the miles have been lower than in previous years I have had a lot of great times. Spent time with friends, celebrated weddings, births of babies and travelled halfway across the world to Australia! I have parkran 17 times, being parkrun run director 14 times, volunteered a further 9 times and also sneaked in some tourism to Isabel Trail, Cairns, Bicester and Cannock Chase. 

In terms of what 2019 holds for me: I am stgarting well with a parkrun double run day, then hopefully off to Mexico in March, with a marathon in May, a van life trip to Scotland in July and the Great North Run in September.  I'm going to try another open water triathlon at some point and improve both my time and experience of the swim.  

I've a plan to help achieve the goal of running the marathon with a training plan and a strategy to help me get more miles in the week. I will be (hopefully) joining Derwent Runners as a social member which means I should regularly get 6 miles outside in on a Tuesday.

In terms of the open water swimming, I have had an online chat with a seasoned Iron distance veteran and he has given me some great advice which I will be able to follow when open water swimming opens in the spring.

The other thing I hope to do more is blogging about how my training is going and my other musing that come to me on my runs.

Hope you all have had a great or at least as good as it could have been 2018 and here is looking at 2019 head on and tackling whatever is thrown at us.