10 in 10

10 Marathons in 10 years

That’s a pretty interesting decision for a then 20 year old man to make. After the first year, it’s gone quite well. I ran the London Marathon in April and had one of the best experiences of my life. It was a great day, so great that I’ve been on a massive come down since then! With 9 Marathons left to run over the next 10 years I will soon be lacing up again to tackle the fastest Marathon route in the World, Berlin. That would mean that I would have run 2 in the first year of the 10 year project. I now have 2 options really. I can stick to my original plan of 10 in 10 or up it to 20 in 10. Decisions decisions…

read more below.

Having trained for 1 marathon I now know the answer though. 10 in 10 is the way it should be done. I am not made for multiple Marathons, don’t get me wrong - I love my race day bling as much as the next young runner but I am not prepared to give my life to running, not like that, not yet. Not at 22 years of age. It takes me 4 months. 4 months out of my life to put as much as I can into running. I half tried to train for Berlin and failed. The race has gone from me wanting a PB to me just wanting to finish a 26.2 mile run for the second time in my life. I couldn’t sacrifice my life for 8 months to running alone. It’s too much. I tried to jump into my normal training plan halfway through and that hasn’t worked because I’m at the stage I was when I first started training. Heavy, slow and confused.

This is my face when I think about the race.

Me and Atticus also talked about the fact that even if you had the best training possible, it could all go wrong on race day. Someone can force you to have cramp, knock you over, jump on you, you could slip, it might snow, it might rain, it might rain and snow. That’s just some of the long list of Marathon feck-ups that can happen to anyone. With all that being said though, I can’t wait to train for my next marathon. I can’t wait for that celebration on race day. The celebration of hundreds of miles logged in the evenings when I could (should) have been drinking or doing something far more exciting like seeing a new movie. I can’t wait to work hard again. I can’t wait to be participating in a process everyday which brings me closer to my goals. I can’t wait to be successful.

The next 9 years of my life will be interesting to say the least, bring it on! 1 Marathon at a time.