Thursday 27 January 2011

How to run 52 marathons in one year

And here's a summary of 2010:

32 singles, 5 doubles, 1 x 10 in 10, one huge dent in my credit card

1 Zurich :-) 2 Stansted Stagger :-( 3 10 in 10 Club AGM :-| 4 Portland Coastal :-( :-( 5 Gloucester :-| 6 Marrakech :-) For Santa! 7 Seville Oink! :-O :-) 8 Malta :-) 9 Grantham Day 1 :-O For Santa! 10 Grantham Day 2 :-| 11 Rome :-) :-) 12 Easter Enigma Quack! 13 Connemara :-) 14 Connemara :-) 15 Brighton :-) :-) 16 London :-) :-) 17 10 in 10 Day 1 :-( 18 10 in 10 Day 2 :-( 19 10 in 10 Day 3 :-) 20 10 in 10 Day 4 :-| 21 10 in 10 Day 5 :-) 22 10 in 10 Day 6 :-| 23 10 in 10 Day 7 :-( 24 10 in 10 Day 8 :-) 25 10 in 10 Day 9 :-) 26 10 in 10 Day 10 :-) :-) :-) For Santa! 27 Chester :-| 28 Dartmoor Discovery :-) :-) 29 Langport Day 1 :-( 30 Langport Day 2 :-( 31 Mauritius :-) :-( 32 Tanners :-( :-( :-( 33 Fairlands Valley :-( 34 Summer Enigma :-) 35 Faversham :-) 36 Isle of Man :-) 37 Fleetwood :-( 38 Kent Coastal :-( :-O 39 2 to go :-| 40 Nottingham :-) 41 Grantham Day 1 :-| 42 Grantham Day 2 :-( 43 Great Langdale :-) :-( 44 Jersey :-) 45 Leicester :-) 46 Abingdon :-( 47 Brentwood :-O :-) For Santa! 48 Snowdonia :-) 49 Porto :-) 50 Cornish :-)51 La Rochelle :-( 52 Calvia :-) For Santa!

I've assigned smileys to each race to calculate a very unscientific measure. 1 point for each :-) , -1 point for each :-( , :-| is just a oh, you know sort of race, :-O for surprising races, usually good surprises, For Santa! for landmark races or placings, and the odd Oink! or Quack! for, well, they had to go in somewhere. Starting from 0, the total score is +16, which roughly means I enjoyed 16 of 'em. Don't look at it the other way round......

I won't be doing 52 in a year ever again, aside from the over training, over racing, tiredness, mental fatigue, time consuming admin and sheer jadedness with the whole thing, it's bloody expensive. Nice to have ticked the box, but I wouldn't recommend it.