I’d planned on 2020 being a big year for my running. It marks 10 years since I ran my first ever marathon and there were two milestones I wanted to smash this year to celebrate:
1. Get to volt level on Nike plus. Yes, I still use Nike plus, although solely for the purpose of reaching the elusive 930 mile ‘volt’ level. I’ve been wanting to hit the top Nike level since I first joined this app in 2012 (sad, I know). And no, I won’t call the app ‘Nike Run Club’, which is what it meant to be called now.
2. Reach 10,000 total miles. I’ve been tracking all my runs since 2012, and if I can run at least 150 miles per month I should be able to reach 10k miles which would be amazing.
As we all know, 2020 turned out to be a year that didn’t go to plan. I actually had a really good month in January, with run-commuting being the most effective way to build my weekly miles and improve my fitness. Especially with managing my runs in between work and parenting commitments.
When the first lockdown happened my running pretty much stopped entirely. There was a lot of adjusting to be done at home and to be honest I wasn’t comfortable leaving the house for a good 4 months or so. Being asthmatic I didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. One by one my planned running events were cancelled which I was rather relieved about – joining a crowded starting line was the last thing I wanted to do while the daily news kept reminding us to stay indoors and be afraid.
This chart shows exactly what happened to my general activity during the year, it’s a pretty stark change:
Thankfully I did manage to pick the running up again towards the end of summer. The MK marathon had postponed the virtual run until September which gave me a target to aim for. Having not run in around 6 months I knew I couldn’t run a marathon in one go so I instead ran it in two halves. This was one of the hardest runs I’d ever done with my current fitness levels but it felt like an amazing achievement and gave me the motivation to try and build up my running again.
I fared much better running the Leighton Buzzard virtual half in November which laid the groundwork for a pretty decent 145 mile December to finish the year on a high note.
It’s bizarre that this year turned out to be both uneventful and memorable at the same time – long periods of no activity followed by some pretty massive challenges. It’s been a tough year for everyone and I’m hugely grateful that myself and my family have been fine and healthy this year. Complaining about a few missed runs really does pale in comparison to some of the real problems people have had to deal with this year and I definitely count myself as extremely fortunate.
