2019 goals

As usual this year I have gone through the process of thinking about stepping up the distances in 2019 and applied for half marathon and a marathon. Then it comes to doing the training and it never seems to go to plan for the last few years for various reasons. Once again I am now thinking just purely to focus on parkruns and hopefully get my times down a bit.  I've broken down my aims below

Average time for parkruns - sub 30

My main focus this year will be on my average time for a parkrun over the course of the year.  These are my average times over the last 4 years:

2015 - 30.36 - 35 parkruns
2016 - 28.12 - 28 parkruns
2017 -  31.04 - 35 parkruns
2018 -  31.52 - 46 parkruns

I am aiming to try for sub 30 average which will be a challenging target going by previous years and especially if I end up doing hillier parkruns more like last year. But hopefully this will give me more focus during the week and mean it will be nessesary to do more speedwork/hill work.

Which parkruns to do?

I thought one of the things that worked well in 2018 and led to me running so many parkruns was running my home parkrun Pollok every second time. It keeps things interesting visiting other runs while still touching base regularly at Pollok.  The 10 for 10 challenge was also good as to get gold it was a case of getting out every week.  If a challenge does come along like that again I would be open to doing it.  I have a few planned parkruns down south already and I would like to do more different Scottish parkruns although I'm not really fussed which ones they are - just different ones to the ones I have done.  In saying that in terms of the Glasgow parkruns I am definitley aiming to get my p index to 7 which will take 4 runs. And hopefully get towards p index of 8 which it would take an extra 5 runs.  My plan is to stick to Glasgow runs during winter January to March, then November and December. Then April to October do runs further a field. While of couse doing Pollok every second week throughout the year.  But on top of that if anyone I know starts going they fancy doing this parkrun or that running that week I would change and just do that.

Milestones

The biggest milestone I should hit this year is my 200th parkrun. Currently I am on 175.  I am on course to also hit my 100th Pollok parkrun where currently I am on 88. This is the second year of my 3 year plan to hit 250. I beat my target last year giving me a bit of extra room in 2019.  So my target is to reach 210 parkruns this year, meaning 35 parkruns for the calender year. But of course anything on top of that is a bonus and I'm not planning on taking days off unless of course I need to.

Another target I should hit a quarter cowl which is 25th different parkrun location. I am on 23 at the moment so something would have to really go wrong not to hit that one. The next target after that is the half cowel which I will eat into next year but I'll be nowhere near hitting it due to other priorities.

Heatmapping

Not a parkrun goal.  This is just one to add some interest for me on my local runs.  It was inspired by an ultra runner in America called Rickey Gates who this year ran every street in San Francisco.  I'm not planning to run every street in Glasgow.  But I have got an area in the southside near to me that I want to run every street in. Not sure how many miles it is but I'll just see how this pans out throughout the year.

2018 Review (Warning may mention parkrun a few times)

I didn't do a blog for November or December as my memory seems to be getting worse as to what actually happened at the parkruns I did these months. I did manage all 4 available in November and did 4/6 in December. One week I missed due to dodgy weather where it looked like conditions may have developed during parkrun where freezing rain would fall meaning widespread ice.  I was more concerned with traveling across icy roads on the way home so just left it. Then the following week I was ill for the first time in ages so that was the reason I took that week off.

But the second half of 2018 I had an amazing run in terms of turning up to parkrun. In fact those 2 parkruns I missed as per above were the only parkruns I missed since August.  Meaning a 4 and half month streak.  I did pick up that injury achilies injury in July which put me out for 3 weeks but have had no problems with it since.  The first half of the year it took me a while to get that elusive sub 30 but I did manage it at Catterick in April. Then I had a sprinkling of sub 30s throughout the year.  One aim was to get a sub 30 at Pollok which was made harder with a change to the course half way through the year. I only managed this once out of 22 attempts.

I took part in one challenge this year which was the 10 for 10 challenge. Celebrating 10 years of parkrun in Scotland.   The challenge was to complete/volunteer at 10 different parkruns and the quicker you did it the better your medal. I managed gold, completing 8 different parkruns running and volunteering at the 2 junior parkruns.  Looking back I feel I cheated myself a bit on this one as I only did one course I hadn't done before and all the parkruns I did were easy to get to. But still challenge completed.

One of the goals I had for this year was to complete every parkrun in Glasgow area 5 times. I did this plus a bit more as I have now completed every parkrun in the Glasgow area 6 times. Midway through the year I found out about the p index which is where you run x amount of parkruns x times and your p index is x.  So this is basically what I have been doing so my p index is currently 6 and I am not too far away from 7.

Another goal was to run 41 parkruns as part of a 3 year plan to get my 250 shirt by 2020.  This was a target I easily achieved having run 46 parkruns this year and I have now run 175 runs total.

Here is some more stats:

Parkrun break down (no of runs at each event)

Pollok - 22
Linwood - 4
Ruchill - 4
Drumchapel - 3
Springburn - 2
Victoria - 2
Tollcross - 1
Greenock - 1
Falkirk - 1

New parkruns done this year - Troon, Catterick, Plean, Lanark Moor, Camperdown and Rising Sun

Times:

27-28 mins - 2
28-29 mins - 2
29-30 mins - 6
30 + mins - 35

Average parkrun time = 31.52

I did not hit any of my target times set out at the start of the year and I know for a fact that in terms of over 30 minute runs this was my worst ever.  This is something I need to improve on for next year and I have a few ideas on how to achieve this.  Out of the 46 parkruns I did I should note that only 12 I would deem to have done on flat courses. And out of the 10 sub 30s I did do 8 came on flat courses and 2 hilly.  That means I did 34 runs in what I would deem hilly courses which is quite a high percentage. So I certainly dont make it easy for myself to actually get good times.

But overall I have really enjoyed this year.  From volunteering and hanging out with folk more down at Rouken Glen juniors, to gatecrashing parkruns that the Runbetweeners happen to be doing at the same time ;-), to venturing further a field with family to do different parkruns during holidays, to hanging with Campbell and Mico on my visits to both Falkirk and Plean and then of course coming home to Pollok more where it all started for me.