Review of 2016

2016 has easily been my best year since returning to running in August 2014. But it didn't really go as planned and really I ended up making it up as I went along.

2016 - The plan

The plan was to go back to running a race a month with my "A" race being the Kielder marathon in October.  Things started well when I did the Buchlyvie 10k in January in 59 minutes.  But after that I didn't run another race till Killearn 10k in June.  Some of it was illness but I found mainly its because I found it really difficult to increase my long runs.  I get stuck in what I call 5k syndrome where most of the runs I have done this year are 5ks. Now there is not anything wrong with this but when you want to run longer races it does cause a problem.  I think one of the reasons for this is running parkruns full out leaving no energy for longer runs on Sundays.  I know some people successfully can do both but I am not one of them at the moment.

Killearn was a tough race on a warm day and I finished in 1.02.  Crieff 10k in July was even tougher but this time it was the course rather than the weather. But at the same time it is one of my favourite 10ks I have ever done.  I finished this one in 1.02 too.  And that was it for the year - 3 races.

Challenges

Something I didn't plan on this year was undertaking 2 challenges that took up over a third of the year.  First of all there was the steps challenge with work where I covered at least 10,000 steps every day for 100 days from the end of May through to the end of August.  I really enjoyed doing this and combined walking with running to get the steps done.  This improved my running massively which I'll go on to cover further down.

The second challenge was just this month where I did the Marcothon which is a challenge to run everyday in December 3 miles or 25 minutes which ever comes first.  After a slightly lazy November I wasn't going into this maybe as fit as I should have been.  Plus it is a big jump going from running 2-3 times a week to running 7 times a week.  This was definitely tougher than the steps challenge as when you need to have a rest day in the steps challenge you just need to walk 10,000 steps.  But in the marcothon you need to run or attempt to run which really took it out of me especially early on.  But I really am starting to feel the benefit of it and beginning to enjoy running everyday.

parkruns 

I didn't do as many parkruns as last years' 35 but I still managed 26.  However where the quantity may have been less, the quality increased dramatically.

2 runs under 26 minutes (Lowerstoft and Great run local)
8 runs between 26-27 minutes (including trips to 2 new parkruns - Livingston and Linwood)
4 runs between 27-28 minutes
3 runs between 28-29 minutes
6 runs between 29-30 minutes (including the new Drumchapel parkrun)
4 runs over 30 minutes (Just to put this into perspective I ran 21 parkruns in over 30 minutes in 2015!)

 Another thing which I got frustrated at last year was my lack of mid week runs. But due to the challenges and also running with Andy at lunchtimes this is no longer an issue.

When I realised my plans were going out the window I did set up some additional goals - to run under 27 minutes at Pollok parkrun which I managed 3 times with my best time being 26.15.  The second was to run over 500 miles.  Which in the end I just left myself too much to do even with the Marcothon but I was in the right ball park.  454 miles in the end.

So overall not the best year in terms of racing. But parkruns, completing the challenges and training runs in general has more than made up for it.