Nice timing

For once, December 31 is falling nicely into the week where I have no running news, so I can use that space for the obligatory end-of-year post.

Looking back at it, I had a spectacular year of running. One year ago I had gone to bed thinking how nice it would be to break 20 minutes for 5k, but realistically I would have to wait until 2008 for my running to reach that level. Little did I know that it would take me just 12 hours to reach that level when I ran 19:52 in the New Year’s race in Phoenix park, and within half a year I had taken another 36 seconds off that time, which was mind boggling. Even better was my time in Adare in March, when I broke sub-40 in my still only-ever 10k race. That was even more unexpected, and something to celebrate, particularly so because this was merely a preparation race for the Connemara ultra, and even then it was just a mere consolation for missing out on Ballycotton. My first ever ultra went extremely well, and even though now I look at the time and am not overly impressed, back then I was in high heaven just for finishing the race. I’d love to run a longer ultra (I think I’ve already mentioned that, uh, about a dozen times this year), but Connemara is the only ultra on the entire island (not counting that silly orienteering thingy they do in the Wicklow mountains), and those ultras in the UK keep messing up the rest of my schedule, so I’ve yet to commit to any of those. Lastly, I ran 3:12 in my only 2007 marathon, which was fast enough to qualify for Boston, a goal that had looked further away than the stars only one year ago. One glance at my sideboard confirms that I had a good 2007, every single PR is from this year. I wonder if there will ever be a year again when I can say that?

There are no miracles in running, all those race times came as a direct result of my training, and the whole idea of that was basically to run as many miles as I could. The final counter stopped at 3704, which is about as many miles for one single year as I had done in all my running time together before that, not I have been running for very long. Health permitting, I’m confident I’ll surpass that mileage again in 2008, but we’ll see, especially so as I’m still grounded.

As far as my “quite severe” chest infection goes, I’m definitely getting better, but I’m still coughing a lot. It took a day for the antibiotics to kick in, but at least by now I don’t feel like I’m about to cough up half of my lungs each time. However, my breathing is still rasping at times, and I’m already halfway through my medication. My participation in Sunday’s race is rather doubtful at that point, and a second visit to the doctor towards the end of the week is more likely than a trip to Mallow. Niamh wouldn’t let me take the car anyway if she were in any doubt about my health, and who can blame her? Even though Mallow is one of the closest races to me, I’ve never made it there yet.

Thanks for reading my blog, it’s been a great 2007, and Happy New Year to everyone out there. Have a good 2008.