Happy New Year

Thought I should start my post by wishing you all a happy new year.  Hope you've either had or will have a fun evening seeing in the New Year.  I'll be having a fairly quiet get together with a group of my closest friends.  It should have been just Ruth and I joining two friends and their two girls for a quiet meal and sleep over.  However, we will now be joined by three other adults and two additional young girls.  A low key evening with good company, good food and good wine suits me, given that I want to do a reasonably decent run tomorrow.  In fact I'll be incorporating our evening do into tomorrow's run.  I'll be driving over to our friends' some 7 miles away, getting a taxi home and then running back by a slightly longer, and more scenic route tomorrow to collect the car.

Following my last blog I went out for a 9 mile run around Cambridge on Tuesday evening.  I maintained a nice steady 7 minute mile pace the whole way through the run.  It was a nice evening, the pavements were quiet and there wasn't much traffic.

I had a busy day yesterday training a number of my personal training clients.  I met two clients that I'm training for Barcelona and Paris marathon, respectively, and put them through their paces.  This gave me an opportunity to stretch my legs, but not quite a full interval session for me.  Still, one run in the morning and one in the evening all counts towards the mileage.

I also met with a reporter who wants to do a piece on my kettlebell training for the local paper.  He's doing a feature on alternative ways to keep fit in the new year.  I mentioned my marathon plans and it seems that he will be interested in giving me some coverage in the local press.

Unfortunately, today has mostly been spent constructing pieces of pilates equipment for my partner.  Ruth has just bought a couple of reformers.  You don't need to know what these are, except that they bear a resemblance to bits of medieval torture equipment.  I will be using them as part of my training for next year, so only fair that I should help construct them.  They can be very useful in improving flexibility, body alignment and core strength.  All very useful for injury prevention and making sure the body functions correctly.

It occurred to me after I signed off last time that anyone reading this might like to know what my plans are for next year.  Some friends have been asking if I've thought about which 12 marathons I will run.  The answer is yes.  The following is my current thinking, but there is plenty of scope for this to change, especially as new marathons spring up all the time.  The first five are pretty fixed, but after that there is scope for me to change my mind and do different events:

Jan 23 - Gloucester Marathon
Feb 27 - Cambridge Boundary Marathon
Mar 13 - Bedford Clanger
Apr 17 - Virgin London Marathon
May 22 - Windermere Marathon
June 19 - Cheltenham Marathon
July 17 - Fairlands Valley Marathon, Stevenage
Aug ? - Seaford Marathon, East Sussex
Sept ? - New Forest Marathon
Oct ? - Clarendon Way Marathon, Hants
Nov ? - Rutland Water Marathon
Dec ? - Portsmouth Coastal Marathon

The last five don't yet have confirmed dates.  It'll be interesting to see how many of the above 12 I do end up running.