…had a bucket list. Even if I had one in the past that I’ve forgotten, running a marathon certainly wasn’t on it. I think I’m yet to see a runner looking like they were enjoying themselves except for the finish straight or as they cross the line. Nope, that wasn’t for me. In place of a bucket list I’ve had impulsive thoughts that come from seemingly nowhere that I randomly act on. One August day in 2014 I was waiting for a train to go and meet my brother just down the line and join him walking the dogs. While I was waiting for the train I googled climbing Kilimanjaro and in less time than it took for the train to pull up I had booked to join a group of people I’d never met summit the roof of Africa in July of 2015.

When I started running it was to find a new challenge, something else I could use to help keep diabetes in remission. Initially it was just do the couch to 5k. That ended up being 10k when the app was the same price as the 5k. Twice as far for the same price? Bargain! Somewhere in those first few days I thought it’d be good to try a half marathon for my birthday so I entered Fix Events Winter Richmond Park Half. Didn’t like it much. However, left alone with my thoughts over Christmas I decided it’d be ‘fun’ to run a half marathon every month, get my first marathon in before I got to the 12 month anniversary of my running and squeeze in an Ultra before the end of 2022. I also went and got my LiRF qualification in January so I could play a little part in the club that had become a big part of my running life.

I went along to the Eagle’s AGM that year because I was interested in seeing the process and what it was all about and watched the draw for the names for the London Marathon. When I checked the website later that evening I found that to get a place in the draw you needed to earn points through a variety of club related activities. 18 was the target to get your name into the hat, 30 was the maximum number you could possible get. Challenge accepted, I was going to get all 30 points. It was nothing to do with getting a place for the LM, it was completing the challenge of collecting each point, so I drew up a little table and planned out what I’d need to run. The painful discovery of osteoarthritis in my right knee meant that I missed four of the races in Summer League and the Wedding Day 7k which eventually cost me 2 points. So when my name was announced for the automatic place at the Christmas party it was a genuine surprise. Now, in my head at least, I am on the road to running all of the Majors and already booked on to the New York marathon.

Earning one of the club places has given me extra motivation to work through the training plan and complete all of the sessions I can get out there and get done. There have been plenty of times when my internal thoughts suggest I cut a run short or skip some of the intervals, but simply knowing that every run is transparent on Strava for people to see keeps me honest to myself. Doubly so when I know that Jenny will be looking at the metrics and commenting and responding to my notes from the run. Having to write these blogs as part of the deal has also proved very cathartic in being as open as I can about how I’m feeling and what my personal journey through all of this has been. I keep hearing Nick’s words to me at the Christmas party, “…make it interesting.” I hope I have. I hope that you have been able to relate to some of the content and maybe seen some of what you have been through in your own running, training for a big race or not.

There can only be a handful of these blogs left now, the big day is fast approaching and my duty to write them for the club will be over. I’ll keep it going somewhere else though as I still have quite a journey ahead of me and I do enjoy reading blogs written by other Eagles, either for the marathon or their own personal ones. It’ll also be a great way to communicate how I’m feeling during the training with Jenny that would otherwise get missed in a phone call or a post session note on Training Peaks.

It’s only been a few days since I wrote the last blog so training wise I don’t have much to say other than it doesn’t feel like a taper yet, at least not how I had imagined it. The weekend ahead (just gone by the time this is published) has a 10k in Kew Gardens as a tempo run and then London Landmarks Half Marathon on Sunday. Once I have run that then I can only think of one more closed road race through London I haven’t done yet. 🤔