Again a year. 2020 and all bets are off

Again it's been a year.

This blog is getting like one of those fairly dreadful "what's been happening with us" letters that turn up in your Christmas cards. Aimed to make you feel that you've somehow wasted the last 12 months while others have been achieving, well, all sorts.

However, this is a running blog, sort of, and in running I get to achieve stuff still.

So I got to be an MV65, but, other than that, 2020 has been anything other than a normal running year.

I'm, of course, not alone in that!

Here's what it should have been:

January - A repeat visit to Oh My Obelisk to run the trail half marathon

February - The Lytchett 10 in Dorset, British Masters 10 mile road championships.

March - The Bath Half Marathon

April - Zurich Marathon

Depending on the Zurich result I was then going to plan the rest of the racing year, with the serious goals being for speed on the roads.

'A' goal was a lifetime PB at the marathon of 3:45 or better. If that wasn't Zurich in April, the contingency was to be Eindhoven in October.

'B' goal (and the essential for Zurich) was a "Boston Qualifier" of around 3:55

'C' goal, with a similar time goal, but different time frame was to be a London Marathon  "Good for Age" qualifier. I could only achieve this after my birthday on October 8th, hence the choice of Eindhoven, the first accessible fast and flat marathon after that day.

So, I went back to Dawlish for the fun of Oh My Obelisk. The course was wetter at the top and I was around 4 minutes slower than last year on the day. In my 65th year, there would be no MV60 win in 2020, but I enjoyed the race, felt in fine fettle and was happy with my time.

Little did I know then that this would be the last actual race for me until 9 months later.

Now it seems a bit ironic that I "lost" both my February and March races, for reasons not directly related to the Covid 19 Pandemic. The weekend of the Lytchett 10 saw the South West of England hit with one of those winter storms that gave us a "you must stay at home" rehearsal. And when it came around to the Bath Half in mid March, I was sure they would cancel (many events already had). Unbelievably, and I think very cynically, they "did a Cheltenham" and brassed it out. I, and many other runners, decided it was not fair to descend on the city of Bath as the hospitals started to fill up. Obviously that's another one off the races to do list as well.

We all know only too well what happened next. Zurich at first postponed to September, and then pretty shamefully inevitably cancelled quite close to the new date, and offered a refund of only 30%.

The "marathon year" was well and truly gone, and with it my plans for a return to competitive road running.

Once the pandemic truly took hold, so much else became important, but my running, if that's possible, became even more important. I almost invariably run off road on Dartmoor with my "training partner" dog, Cocoa. To both my cost and benefit, this has made him a very, very fit dog, and without his daily doses of energy burning, his spaniel nature can make him a pestering pain in the arse about the place. Fortunately for both of us, even when the tightest restrictions were in place, our running habit was a permissable activity.

Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running. Follow @Nariokotomeboy

Just keep going. (Written at the start of 2020)

Goals.
In just about every walk of life we are encouraged to set, work to, and, hopefully, achieve goals.
There are "outcome goals" and "process goals". If I'm honest with myself, right now in my life, the whole business of setting and working to achieve outcome goals has come down to my running. Whilst I haven't exactly messed up the other stuff, I have certainly slipped into a comfort zone for 15 years or so. A bit of an underachiever with a happy family life who won't be able to retire in comfort.
Maybe I'll write a book that sells millions. Or, like the last one, maybe it will remain "just an idea" with the first few chapters lost on a hard drive of a defunct laptop.
I'd like to think my running isn't like that.

My last blog post in September 2019 left me about to take on a road half marathon for the first time since The Great West Run in October 2016. The prosaic sounding Jewson Barnstaple Half Marathon took place on a wet and windy Sunday at the end of the month, and I had set myself an apparently arbitrary target of 1:45. On the day, I knew the race would split neatly into two halves, a headwind for the "out" and a tailwind for the "back", so I didn't push too hard for the first 7 miles, happy to average about 10 to 15 seconds slower than the 4:59 x km average pace I would need. Not able to quite drag it back I finished strongly in 1:46:48.

I had toyed with the idea of another race in Switzerland in October after the particularly positive experiences of 2018 and 2019. The Napf Marathon, mainly on gravel roads in the Emmenthal, had caught my eye, but in the end I opted for a hilly trail / road marathon in Cornwall at the Eden Project. Once again the weather gods were unkind: days of rain prior to the race and then regular downpours as we got ready for the start. It was a helter skelter start downhill on public roads for 2 miles, before a sharp about turn and a long trail section up a valley. Road and muddy trail alternated throughout the course. The roads were relentlessly 'undulating', we hit some immense deep puddles on one section of trail and we also had to hands and knees climb a Tor at eleven miles. But it was pretty joyous stuff. The aid stations run by St Austell running club were full of snacks and encouragement, including a banner at 16 miles that said "Never trust a fart after 13 miles". The last couple of miles were sharply downhill on tarmac deep into the heart of the Eden Project, and the old knees were starting to take a battering as I spotted Debbie and Cocoa giving encouragement about 100 metres from the finish. Unfortunately Cocoa saw his opportunity to join me and danced out in front of me on his extending lead. They make excellent tripwires when taut you know. And before I knew it there I was sliding on tarmac to the gasps of the crowd. I just managed to get up and jog to the tape to avoid the onrushing paramedics. Mirth all round. My 4 hours 30 odd was good enough for an MV60 win, a free can of Tribute and a pasty. A pretty good way to end the racing season.

Seconds before the tumble

That meant it was pretty much time to back off from "training" as the nights drew in, the wet stuff came back to Dartmoor, and those niggles that all runners ignore for months on end really do need a bit of rest.

So I coasted to the end of 2019. Yet again it had been quite a running year, with plenty of goals achieved, the odd age group win, and something to look forward to in 2020. What's that? well, a change of age category from MV60 to MV65 coming up meant extra minutes on qualifying times for the Major World Marathons. BQ maybe?

So I entered the Zurich Marathon for April 2020. Now what could possibly happen to disrupt that?

Evolved to run. Born to run. Older, greyer, still running. Follow @Nariokotomeboy