2017 reflections ...

[OutAlongTheRiver]

   

Feet as seen in mud at end of Hangover 5 in Worthing on New Year's Day 2018

Since I posted on the Park Run PB in October I managed to complete some more good runs, including another reasonable (not outstanding) WSFRL event for Lewes AC in November. And then hit bad ankle turnover in late November.  That plus flu has meant running kibboshed until last week or so of December. So now building up to being able to get round Almeria HM in early Feb.

But it has allowed me to reflect on what worked for me in 2017 and it seems to be quite obvious stuff to be honest:

- getting the miles in on a regular basis 1: Almeria was bad for me in 2017 since I did little else but twitten runs in the 6 weeks before. I thought my prep for previous October's HM would see me through. It didn't.

- getting the miles in on a regular basis 2: by contrast, the second half of Moyleman just 5 weeks later felt infinitely better, and I had just put in runs during the week, as well as weekends. Plus I'd thrown in some longer runs;

- doing core exercise makes huge difference to how I feel and my times: I looked back and found I really only did any serious (daily) core excerises from mid July to end August. And my times on the WSFRL rocketed (I also did sensible warm ups  ...). But it helped me in middle and end sections of races when tiredness set in

- cross-training likewise: I managed in August to undertaken c 30 mins swimming at a time. And that again reinforced the running.

- actually from a base level of fitness, you can make a difference in one month:  combining core, cross-training and sustained miles for just 4-5 weeks made a heck of a difference to me.

Finally - don't try to run a marathon on the twittens. Or if you do, make it only once a year.

Happy 2018 running y'all!