I have looked back at my goals for 2014 so now it’s time to set my goals for the coming year.
Complete Three Marathons
I will be running the Brighton Marathon again on 12th April, where I will be be taking it relatively easy and using it as a catered training run, and then the Three Forts Challenge Marathon on the 3rd May, where I will be enjoying a nice slow trail run. My main marathon will be the Kent Roadrunner Marathon on the 30th May. I haven’t thought much about a specific time this year so I’ll go with “setting a new marathon PB”.
Run My First Ultra
All my favourite runs of 2015 were long train runs where I forgot about pace and finishing time. I just ran for the love of it and ate cold pizza with flat coke that tasted like joyous sweet honey milk of the gods, freshly squeezed from the nipple of a unicorn dancing across a rainbow. I’ll probably target the Salisbury 5-4-3-2-1 because I was meant to run it last year but ended up dropping down to the half marathon route due to lack of training after coming back from injury.
Run a sub 1 hour 38 minute Half-Marathon
Time to set myself a new half PB. I set the same target last year but then got my pacing wrong at Reading and then lost all my fitness through the rest of the year. No idea where yet but it would be awesome to run this on home territory (aka Ealing Half).
Help The Son Complete His 50th parkrun
You’d think this one would be the easiest. He’s already on 41 completed parkruns. Getting into his bedroom, waking the leviathan, and getting him out to run has the same difficulty rating as finding the Holy Grail.
Complete All London parkrun Events
Me and Other Dan are currently half way there. Twenty three done and twenty three to go. We expect the total to rise through the year as new events are activated.
Continue to Volunteer
I’ve had a great time volunteering this year. parkrun provides ample opportunities to get that warm fuzzy feeling of helping others. I also manned the car park at the Osterley 10k before helping at the finish line, manned a drinks station at the free Eagles 20m training run, and captained the Eagles Sunday League mens cross-country team.
Run and Blog Through Juneathon
I’m not going for Janathon thus year. Still recovering from some minor surgery.
Lose 10kg of Weight
The easiest or hardest goal? Let’s wait and see (again). I found it easy to lose the weight during marathon training last year but then even easier to put the weight (plus more) back on.
Run a sub 20 parkrun 5k
Sometimes you just have to live the impossible dream. Didn’t even get close to me over 21 minute PB last year so no idea how I’ll find another 90+ seconds to drop. You have to have one stupidly difficult goal, right?
Run a sub 45 10k
I was so close at the Eagles 10k, where I lowered my PB to 45 minutes & 30 seconds. Maybe if I had been brave enough to hang onto the ‘running faster than sub-45 minute pacers’. Plenty of oppurtunity through Summer League.
Blog Throughout the Year
Just like losing weight… it sounds so easy.
Enjoy Running with a Smile on my Face
This should be easy, even when injured I can volunteer at parkrun or cheer on my fellow Eagles, but in 2015 I would like to get The Son more involved and enjoying his running. He’ll be racing at Summer League again, to hopefully win his age group, but he also wants to keep his school cross-country title, defend his 100m & 200m & 400m titles at school sports day and win the victor ludorum again before he graduates and starts at a new school.
I know that he can do it but he will need to run at parkrun and join me for a few training runs – something only possible if he is enjoying his running.
