Running Marathons and Goal Setting
Today’s picture is from April 2011, I was running in the Exmoor trail marathon (a CTS event run by EnduranceLife – excellent events, I can thoroughly recommend them) and I finished 1st in ‘Male Veterans’ and 9th overall, with a finish time of 4 hours 40 minutes and 59 seconds. The course was approximately 27.1 miles and included well over 5000 feet of ascent, including one very big, long, steep climb just 5 miles from the end, which was torture on tired legs.
This time of year, with New Year just around the corner, I always spend time thinking about goals and challenges. I ran a lot of marathons in 2011, that year my fitness was one of my big goals and I pushed it to an all-time high. As well as a ‘first-place-in-age-group’ marathon finish, I ran a sub 3:15 road marathon in Copenhagen, aged 40, I ran a 10k PB of exactly 42 mins, I completed the National 3 Peaks Challenge inside 24 hours, I completed 1014 good-form clean push-ups in 1 hour and I cycled from John O’Groats to Land’s End in 9 days, a total of 963 miles. I certainly was ‘fit’ in the sense of cardio-vascular performance and the mental attitude for endurance sport.
Broader goals
As regular readers of this blog will know...