This is a very belated post! A big irony of working from home is that I seem to have far less time without the daily commute – I used to write these posts on the train and have since struggled to find or make time for writing. I’d nearly given up on this blog altogether so this is an effort to try and get started again.
Looking back, 2021 had been an important year for my running and health in general so I want to record it here before I forget.
January – July
I remember a very slow start to last year after struggling to get back to a regular running routine. there were still a lot of social distancing restrictions and It was a pretty cold winter with freezing temperatures up until March. I was also very unfit, had little energy and was seriously lacking motivation to get out and run.
In fact, this groggy feeling lasted well into June when I decided to make some big changes to my diet and lifestyle. I started calorie counting, intermittent fasting and tried to ramp up my mileage slowly.
Amazingly, I managed to have an ok time running the MK marathon as a virtual run. It wasn’t pretty but I managed to run the entire distance in one go – a big improvement from last year. Training was a bit slow and grudging but after the marathon I had at least raised my fitness to a level I could build from.
One thing that became a huge help over this time was Fetcheveryone’s “Castle Challenge”. A 600 mile route mapped out across the UK, broken up into 50 mile checkpoints that finished at a historic castle on the map. It is absolutely as geeky as it sounds and it gave me a good focal point for my training. I joined in April with several hundred other people from the website and we had until September to reach the 600 miles. After each run I could check the map and see where my dot had moved to on the course, and where I was positioned with the rest of the runners. It felt like I was actually participating in something with other runners again, something I hadn’t done in a while and was missing. I don’t think I’d have been able to run the MK marathon if I hadn’t used this to keep motivation for training.
July – December
Summer was spent mostly ramping up the running, sticking to my diet and getting fit again. I finished the Castle Challenge in the end of August and had boosted my mileage considerably. In a moment of hysteria I booked myself into the Tring Ultra and even the Wendover Woods marathon as a big challenge to work towards. By early September I was becoming very nervous about the decision.
Tring ended up being a very pleasant surprise with a time comparable to my pre lockdown runs. It was my first run with actual people in a long time and I realised how much I missed taking part in these events. It was great seeing some old faces there too. I also had an amazing time running the Wendover Woods marathon in the autumn, despite a chaotic morning, feeling nervous and dragging my family out on a very bitterly cold day. These two runs felt like a great achievement and a major turning point for my health this year.
My fitness steadily improved throughout the year as my mileage picked up. By November I was consistently running 50 mile weeks and I realised that if I kept going I could run more miles than in any other year! I set a target of reaching 1700 miles by the end of the year to finish the year on a high.
Covid
In the last weeks of December I still had about 100 miles to go to hit my target and I was feeling confident. All I needed to do was stick to my running routine and it’ll be in the bag!
And then everyone got Covid.
With about a week to go before Christmas, several family members tested positive for Covid, including me and Lorna. We’d all be self isolating until the very end of December which scuppered our Christmas plans. Disappointment was a huge understatement.
I found it hard to stomach not being able to run, especially as I was so close to my target. Despite feeling well enough to run I was still testing positive and couldn’t leave the house.
I tried running in the garden but found it was a waste of time. It wasn’t practical, taking about 3 hours to run 7 miles and even worse, I was wrecking the grass which Lorna was not too pleased about. In the end I caved in and panic-bought a treadmill from Argos which could be delivered in a couple of days, by some kind of miracle. It was the 28th of December and I had a couple of days to try and get as close to my target as possible. 1700 miles was now impossible but if I could do cover 40 miles in two days I’d still manage to beat my previous best.
I’m not normally a fan of using treadmills because I get bored running on the spot and watching the miles on a display. I signed up to Zwift which is (free for runners) which was a massive help for keeping my mind occupied for a long run. You choose a location and as you run you can see your avatar running through the location. You choose different pathways to explore, training sessions and even races to enter. I’m a big fan of Zwift now and will be using it for all my treadmill runs.
In the end I managed to run two 20 mile runs on those last two days of the year, just about hitting a target of 1681. It wasn’t the 1700 I wanted but that didn’t matter. What started out as a slow and disappointing year turned into a big achievement for me which I want to remember. Getting back in shape after two years of lockdowns and self isolating, running some real life events and running more that any other year feels amazing to look back on.
