Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

One year on

The first anniversary of my first run passed quietly a couple of weeks ago. Annoyingly, at the time I was injured due to an overly psychotic run round my favourite hills 'n' trails route, so I've only just got around to tallying up the statistics.

So, in my first year I have...

• Run 1397km in three different pairs of shoes (all Asics - 1090, 2090 and 2100). This took 122 hours at an average speed of 11.4km/h.
• Raced two 5ks - in 22:48 and 23:01 (don't even ask)
• Raced four 10ks - in 47:48, 44:43, 42:40 and 42:35.
• Raced one half marathon in 1:46:29 (rather slower than I hoped for - it was a very hot day)
• Raced one marathon in 3:48:18 (but I want to improve that)
• Raced a number of sundry other ten-milers, eight-milers and the like.

So what were the highlights? Well, there plenty of lowlights (injuries suck, and crashing and burning with cramp in a Last Friday 5k was pretty humiliating too), but the good bits were things like:

• Hilly road races - small, friendly races like the Alton 10 and the Hog's Back are some of the most fun you can have with your running shoes on.
• Going out on cold winter evenings wearing just a T-shirt and a pair of shorts and not really feeling cold.
• Discovering that a lot of the doom-laden talk about how hard marathons are is bunk, and that it's really just a matter of eating mounds of pasta beforehand, making sure you don't get blisters, and keeping your legs moving for 42km.
• Getting away with wearing Lycra in public.
• Discovering a whole new range of geeky gadgets and gizmos to play with.
• Discovering that hey, there's at least one sporting activity at which I don't totally suck. I'm not a great runner, but my race performances are generally well clear of DFL.

I'm now not injured any more, but I've decided that the shin splints came at exactly the wrong time to allow me to get myself back in shape for the Loch Ness Marathon. I've decided that the best option is therefore to reluctantly miss that race (a real shame - it's a marathon! and it's in the Highlands!) and concentrate on being in shape for the Cabbage Patch 10 half way through October and the Dublin City Marathon a couple of weeks later. I'm looking forward to both.

My plans for the next year are still uncertain, but things which I'd like to think I can do over the next year or so include:

• Getting my 10k time as close to 40 minutes as possible. Sub-40 would be nice, but we'll have to see.
• Aiming for a 3:30 or thereabouts marathon. If I actually train properly I should be able to take some time off my 3:48 PB, and my half-marathon PB (1:45) could use some improvement too.
• Do the Hogs Back and Alton races again (see above).
• Thinking about entering the Comrades Marathon (actually a 90km ultramarathon) at some point. Comrades is one of the world's great races - South Africans will tell you it's the world's greatest race (but then again, Americans will often claim that the Boston Marathon is, so such claims should be taken with a pinch of salt). Next year might even be a possibility, and would be preferable to 2007 as 2006 will be an up run. We'll see.

Posted by mpk at September 10, 2005 10:06 PM