It’s been a funny old year, full of surprises. Some good, some less good.

The good

I’ve done nine ten races this year. Plus one I dropped out of. Not a bad finish to DNF ratio. Three of those races were cross country races, which I’d have liked to do more of but the dates have been tricky the past month.

I’ve also done four parkruns. In the summer I took my time down to 21:21 which I was happy with. I was also wearing my niece’s tutu at the time so my photos look pretty special.

Probably one of the highlights of the year was running 3:30 at Edinburgh Marathon to earn a Boston Qualifyer time. I felt strong the whole race and had a perfect day. I’d had a London place but had been unwell and had a minor injury so to be able to bounce back from that for a good race a month later was great.

Running Cambridge Half back at the start of the year was great too. I’d started the year planning to run South Downs Way 50 miler but my heart wasn’t in it so I focussed on the half marathon instead. I got an unexpected PB and really enjoyed the race.

This year hasn’t just been about my running though. It’s been my first year of coaching full-time and I’ve been able to help a lot of great runners do brilliant things this year. So even when I haven’t been able to run myself, I’ve been able to be part of their racing.

The not so good

I don’t mind the dropping out of races or not being able to run a time I’m chasing part of injury so much as the not being able to run AT ALL part. When it comes down to it, I just like running and would gladly never enter another race again if that was the only way I could carry on running.

Still, dropping out of Peterborough half marathon wasn’t fun. I’d been training well for 10 weeks before I got a pain in my leg which made me ease up and wasn’t fully resolved on race day. On the plus side, I know that I was running faster and stronger in training than I had before. So even though I didn’t get a time to validate this, I know the hard work had paid off.

I was also unwell this year. Ironically, the day that I was supposed to be doing South Downs Way 50 but had withdrawn from, I was sat on a stretcher in A&E having been taken to hospital in the middle of the night. I think I’d rather have done the 50 given the choice. I’m OK now but it took a while to get to the bottom of what was going on and then get my head round that.

This past month I’ve been running lower mileage, getting back into swimming and hitting the gym a couple of times a week and (fingers crossed) my leg that was unhappy for a while after the half is all ok again.

So I guess what I learnt this year is to enjoy the good runs when they come, take satisfaction in those PBs but above all, enjoy being able to run and don’t take it for granted. Here’s to 2017.