Looking back on 2018, I feel a certain smugness. My aim was to do a long, that is half-marathon distance, or further, race in each quarter, and that I achieved. On the other hand I am slow, much slower these days, and I worry that improvement is perhaps beyond me, as I approach my 64th birthday.
Over the whole year, according to Strava, I ran 723 miles (562.1 in 2017) in 147h 8m (111h 51m in 2017), on 244 occasions (191 in 2107), and I climbed 57,336 ft (42,231 ft in 2017).
The quarters went thus:
January to March: as well as returning to the Brighton half marathon for the first time for many years, I ran the Blackcap, Heathfield Park and Pett cross country events. But the highlight was organising the marshals, and marshalling myself, for the 2018 Moyleman, run in the coldest weather of the winter.
April to June: the long race here was new to me, a 15 miler on the Late Spring Bank Holiday Monday, from Newhaven Harbour to Brighton Marina and back, in absurdly hot conditions. Also of note was another Seaford Striders Couch to 5k programme, which we ran, free to all-comers, from April to June. Once again I was impressed that over 50 people of all sorts and conditions stuck to the programme over the nine weeks, and many went on to join the club. I also ran the very muddy Lewes 10k on Easter Monday
July to August: The long run came early: Bewl’s lovely 15 miler, again in very warm conditions, early in July. Training for October’s Beachy Head marathon began, with some longer runs along routes I hadn’t run for some years.
October to December: my long run in the last quarter of the year was, of course, the Beachy Head marathon. My time was disgraceful, but I finished, five years after my last marathon, and ten years after my last visit to this course. This was perhaps the richest quarter for races, with three cross-country events, the Brighton 10k, and the 9 mile Downland Devil.
Throughout the year I’ve attended parkruns, visiting Weymouth for the first time, and participated, when possible in the Sunday morning Twitten runs in Lewes. There’s been some good conference running too, round Keele University campus for the Health Libraries Group conference there in June, in Cardiff for EAHIL in July, and in Berne in Switzerland in August. I got a new Garmin, which is a joy, as the battery on the old one, a birthday present from my mother (who died in 2006, so that gives an idea of its vintage), was prone to giving up half-way through races.
When I began running, I did so a lone wolf. I believed that running on my own, wearing a brooding Heathcliffian expression and with a slim volume of verse stuffed down my shorts, was the only true way to experience the sport. This year, more than before, the truth that running is in fact about the company you keep, seems obvious to me. The year has been made by the comradeship of people like the Moyleman committee and marshals, the Twitten runners of Lewes (about whom a anthropologist must surely one day write a thesis), the Seaford Striders, the parkrunners, and all the other people I’ve met while running out and about.
So in 2019, I already have places in the Eastbourne Half and the Mid-Sussex Marathon weekend. I should make it to 100 parkruns some time before my birthday in February. Seaford parkrun will launch at a date to be announced. There’s the Moyleman marshalling to organise, on St Patrick’s Day this year. But first of all, I go out tomorrow to Peacehaven parkrun, where the mighty Sweder achieves his century, and then to our Seaford Striders seafront run. A happy new year to you all.
