April
The good (for age) one

Manchester marathon was the first race penciled and then penned and then highlighted and circled and underlined in my diary for 2013. It’s fair to say I was on a bit of a mission to secure my good for age time for London. Despite some setbacks it all went to plan on the day. Medal one collected!

May
The first one

Years ago (before I became a runner and still couldn’t swim) I somehow thought it would be a good idea to enter a triathlon. Possibly I was trying to impress someone or had been sucked in by clever marketing. Luckily my entry form got lost in the post (because this was that long ago that you couldn’t enter online) because I now know that even ‘sprint’ triathlons are pretty hard. Especially if you’re rubbish at one or more of the disciplines. The St Neots Sprint was a good introductory race. (No medal – a handy towel instead.)

June
The Olympic one

I had a month between my first sprint distance triathlon and my Olympic distance event (fun fact: you don’t get tired of having to tell people that you’re not actually competing in the Olympics). My plan was this: finish sprint triathlon, have a rest, go on holiday, come home and realise you have to do a triathlon double the distance of the one that you found really hard a few weeks earlier, cry in the toilets at work, do the race anyway. I executed this preparation plan without hiccup. The Marlow Triathlon was hard but, on reflection, quite fun.

July
The hot one

This wasn’t my finest athletic performance. The clue to how badly it went lies in the fact that it has not been mentioned on this blog until now. On the hottest weekend of the summer I headed to Oxford to cycle 30 miles with Katie. Then we got a bit drunk on beer and champagne, ate some partially cooked salmon and after a couple of hours sleep headed to the start of the Edgehill half marathon. It was a hilly race, it was 30C and at seven miles a marshal handed me an ice lolly that made me so happy that if i hadn’t been severely dehydrated I might have cried. There was no medal so I don’t know whether this all actually happened or was just a bad dream brought on by the salmon.

August
The 100-mile one

Cycling 100 miles doesn’t seem like that much fun until you consider that by taking part in the race you’re annoying the hell out of anti-cycling, 4×4 driving Surrey residents – now you’re talking. Ride 100 was where I discovered my strong skill when it comes to sport – my ability to eat vast quantities of food while cycling.

September
The wet one

In September I went a bit stupid and attempted to do ALL THE RACES. This kicked off with me confounding all expectations by captaining a swim team in a 4000m open water swimming relay and actually enjoying it.

The women’s one

In a weekend that I decided to do two races, I did a 10k event that was just for women. Sadly it wasn’t just for ginger-haired women called Laura or I would have totally come in the top three.

The musical one

The next day I found myself doing Run To The Beat half marathon – so-called because it has DJs and bands along the route. This confirmed for me that the only times that music and competitive sport should collide is in musical chairs and that dancing horse game they have at the Olympics.

The scary one

Call me old fashioned, but I believe it’s a good life rule to not enter races that involve words like hell, inferno, apocalypse or disemboweled. I forgot this when I agreed to do The Gauntlet half-iron triathlon – a race in which I spent 10 miles crying and sobbing.

If you’re reading this post still and wondering ‘When will this thing end’ then you’re experiencing the same feelings that I had at this stage in my racing year. There’s just a half and a marathon left but, unlike me, you won’t be getting a shiny medal at the end. Sorry.

October
The traditional one

It’s a race that’s been in my diary every year for the past five years. So despite having two parties to go to on the same day, I shoehorned in the Great Eastern Run half marathon and ran straight from the finish line to the first of these celebrations. Tip: race goodie bags don’t make a good substitute for a birthday gift.

The last one

Running a marathon isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, but it should be. I headed to Frankfurt to drink beer and run a marathon – both were equally successfully executed though one made me feel more sore in the head than the legs. Watch this video of the race.