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.     
                    

The year started well

I had the honour of running Bushy Park parkrun on 1^st January 2014 all down to the fact that I have a wonderful partner who organised our New Year’s Eve celebrations that were only 40 minutes away from Bushy. 

Ok it might not be everyone’s cup of tea to get up at 6:30am in New Year’s Day and pull on Lycra running capris and a head off in the dark, dank and drizzly morning at 7:30am!  I

suspect that a large majority were nursing hangovers and wondering /marvelling exactly how they ended up in bed not only underdressed but in their JP’s as the last thing they remember was singing along to meatloaf on the karaoke.

Now don't get me wrong I am not knocking it, if you can do it GREAT. However, long gone have the days where I could drink most of the night and still function the next day; feeling sick to my stomach is not something that I relish and the next day is always a write off for me and I always feel incredibly guilty about. 

Back to Bushy, if you don't know it already Bushy Park is a mecca for all parkrunners, it was where it all began back in 2004 with just 13 runners in Bushy Park, Teddington.  Bushy regularly gets well over 500 runners each week, it really a sight to behold, they have great signs like when you are in the audience of a TV show “Quite please during the run briefing” which made me giggle, and “caution hazard” signs which made me wonder was the marshal the hazard or something else!

I really enjoyed the run and you would think that being one of 571 finishers on the day and being over 100 miles away from home that I wouldn't know anyone. Well you would be wrong I met and chatted Joanne Sinton-Hewitt the wife of the brains behind the concept of parkrun. Only the week previous we had met the week before at my local parkrun where both her and Paul enjoyed the hills of Hanley parkrun before joining up for coffee at the church café afterwards.

My second encounter was Neil Hankey, who noticed my Trentham top, we got talking about how he was a native of Stoke on Trent and had run Hanley parkrun on a number of occasions when he visited home, which was all very nice but it was close to the finish and I really wanted to go sub 25 minutes for my 1^st parkrun of 2014. 

Aalst it was not to be (25:12 and finished 240th), but I can't really blame Neil it was a very wet and muddy finis. I think that if I had pushed on hard I may very well have performed a spectacular faceplant in the finish funnel, not something I would have wanted to be remembered for!   

I'm very close to celebrating my 50^th parkrun and I'm hoping that on my 2^nd day of being 40 I can also celebrate being 50!

To find out more about parkrun check out these links: 

"This is parkrun" video http://vimeo.com/10348812   

Weekly parkrun podcast http://www.marathontalk.com/parkrun.php

The parkrun website http://www.parkrun.org.uk/

The historical chart of parkrun “the zombie effect” http://www.parkrun.org.uk/results/historicalchart/

My local parkrun Hanley http://www.parkrun.org.uk/hanley/

My parkrun history http://www.parkrun.org.uk/results/athleteresultshistory/?athleteNumber=199129

Short stock take on 2012

Well the end of the year is upon us and what a year has been!!! I have been doing the usual runner calculations and thinking about my targets for 2013. 

Running totals for 2012

• Race miles 196
• 249 days running
• Miles for year 1815 (I didn't find daily mile until after my running year had started)
• Highest Monthly mileage 190
• Highest weekly mileage 48
• Races 21

Looking back there have been some great memories such as being 1 of 5,000 that took part in the Olympic Park Run in March. Running two 20 mile races; one I loathed and the other I loved, moved clubs to Trentham Running Club and met loads of new friends along the way.  Running the Wild thing in September with the new found friends. 

All of that was in between working full time and going back to college to study HNC in sport and fitness.

I started the year with the number 8 in my mind and I was going to:

• run 8 half marathons - I actually did 9!!
• get 8 PB - over achieved again
• volunteer at 8 parkrun - failed only achieved 3 out of 8 
• loss 8lb and keep it off - failed managed to lose 4lb and keep it off but christmas has not helped 

All in all it has been a good year and a fun year, I am looking forward to 2013 and the new challenges and distances. Take care everyone and have a great New Year’s Eve whatever you are doing