I have done a lot of running in 2017 – just over 1203 miles in fact (ignoring inaccuracies due to dodgy gps signal). A lot of those miles came in the early part of the year when I was training for my first (and so far only) 50 mile ultra-marathon in May. The monthly totals go like this: 96, 165, 154, 177, 130, 64, 96, 103, 56, 44, 69, 51. Over the year I have run 3 x 10k races (Ivybridge in May, Muddy Duck in July and Plymouth in October), the 6 Moor Miles race (6.4 miles in July), 1 x Half Marathon (Reading in March), The Grizzly (19.4 miles in March), 3 x Marathons (Taunton and Southampton in April, New Forest in September) and two ultra marathons (Somerset Flat 50 Miler in May and Mendip Marauder 30 Miler in August).
My highlights have to be the two ultra marathons, but marathon PBs at Taunton and then at Southampton when I broke the 4 hour mark for the first time are also up there along with the cheeky 10k PB I got at Ivybridge when, on the back of my distance training, I had no idea whether I could still run ‘fast’ over short distances but just went for it anyway. Here are a few pictures to commemorate some of these achievements…
Crossing the line at the Taunton Marathon.
Post-Southampton Marathon with a new sub-4 hour marathon PB in the bag!
Looking a bit ill (and certainly not feeling so good) at about 32 miles into the Somerset Flat 50 Miler – a cup of tea and a good amount of food perked me up here.
With just 5-6 miles to go of the 50 Miler at Blue Anchor – this is one of my favourite pictures of the year.
On Uphill Beach at the end of the Mendip Marauder.
What does 2018 hold? As far as specific events are concerned, I’m not entirely sure. I am booked into the Grizzly in March again and have a hotel booked ahead of the Southampton Marathon in April (or maybe the Half Marathon depending on other events). I ought to have a crack at a really good time for the marathon (3:45 ought to be in reach) but I do also want to go longer again, and once I have fixed on an event (which is proving tricky) then the training for that will dominate and influence everything else. I’d like to try to run more consistently through the year – 100 miles in each calendar month seems like a good target but to achieve this I will have to be better at getting going again after a long event than I was this year. I suspect I would also have to do a little less in the early part of the year to avoid the general, creeping fatigue that I found had kicked in by September this year and which left me doing very little through the autumn. Perhaps a good plan would be to focus on the Southampton Marathon in April, then find a 35ish mile ultra-marathon in June/early July and then find another one or two marathon plus events for the early autumn (Eden Marathon in October?). We’ll see!
Tim O'Hare 