On Saturday I hosted a marathon training workshop for a group of runners taking on their first marathon this year. In truth, most were first timers and a few had run a marathon before but wanted to feel a little more prepared last time round.

When I first started my running groups a few years ago, I’d wanted to create something that I would have wanted to go to when I was just starting out running but that wasn’t available. And that was the plan with my workshop – to create the sort of event I would have benefited from six years ago and that answered all the questions I had.

I think the biggest positive that people got from the day was being in the same room as people who are on the same journey, having the same anxieties and fears as them. Being able to chat through the ups and downs of training so far over a cup of coffee will have gone a long way to quieting that voice that says ‘I can’t do it’.

As well as that I spoke on various aspects of marathon training and we headed to the park for a training session. I really enjoyed spending the day with a bunch of enthusiastic runners.

I’ll be holding another marathon workshop in the future, if you’d like to know when it’s happening you can put your email in the box at the bottom of my workshop page and I’ll let you know all about it.

On Saturday night I went out for a few drinks in what feels like a very long time. Most of January has been spent head down, focusing on work or running. So it was nice to catch up with some friends and enjoy an evening off.

It didn’t, however, make Sunday’s run very fun. I’d been planning to do 12 miles and negotiated myself up from 4 miles to the eventual 10 throughout the run. Of course I came back feeling a lot better than I’d left.

I ran a total of 127 miles in January, which is pretty good for quitting my goal race half way through the month.