Has anyone made any resolutions for 2016? Mine is to chart and record all of my runs and mileage better. I want to keep a record of all my mileage, both individual runs, weekly totals and also an overall total for the year. This is something I have never done properly and I want to change that. Also, just as I am interested in seeing how it works out, I am going to calculate my average speed from the sum of all my runs throughout the year to see what my average pace of all my races and training runs added together comes to. I will hopefully keep you all up to date with how that is going throughout the year.
2015 was an incredible year for me on a personal level, and I met and exceeded almost all my goals that I had set for myself at the start of the year. I set PB's across the board, except for 10 miles as I didn't race the distance, and managed to represent my County in the Intercounties crosscountry championship. Then of course there was the whole marathon experience at London. The only disappointment was of course that I didn't break 32 minutes for the 10k, but we can work on that this time around.
The biggest success of the last 12 months? It is difficult to choose just one, having taken 4 minutes off my half marathon time and 8 minutes off my full marathon time. But I think I would actually say my improvement in 5k is my biggest achievement, I have managed to get my time down from 15:42 to 15:14, almost half a minute quicker. My challenge for 2016 is now to try and knock off the remaining 15 seconds to dip under the 15 minutes mark.
I obviously hope to continue improving across all the distances, but the short stuff will become increasingly important this year as I try to get my top speed up as much as I possibly can. One way I intend to try and do this is to compete in a track season for the first time this summer. Marathon training and recovery has made it too difficult to do this in previous years. I am both excited for trying something new, but also a little bit apprehensive as I will be taking myself out of my comfort zone and don't know what to expect! So that's one to watch out for...also I may have to look into joining a club that is affiliated to the northern league as a second claim, in order to compete in the toughest races possible. Again something to explore and think about there.
My other targets for the year ahead? I would love to have another crack at running in the Intercounties for Lancashire, if I am able to qualify, and I am also looking to run in some of the bigger 10k and half marathon races since I am not doing a marathon. Hopefully I will do the Great North Run for the first time.
First though, I need to focus on getting back fully fit, after a back muscle injury left me unable to train over the whole Christmas period. In total I had 8 days off running completely, and have since been restricted to shorter, slower runs than normal as my muscle is still going into a spazm when I try to introduce any sort of pace to my runs.
I am just glad to be back out there though, and hopefully the two weeks rest will be of benefit in the long run, although it has left me re-thinking my race plans for January, as I am most likely going to be unable to target a fast time at Inskip half now.
All the best for the new year everyone, let's hope it is a productive, fast and injury-free one for us all!
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