I Would Jog 500 Miles…

…and I would jog five hundred more

Just to be the man who jogged a thousand miles for no particular reason whatsoever and then kicked off your new year by blathering on about it*

*last line requires work and possible kickbacks to The Proclaimers

Sitting in front of the Mac eating biscuits and drinking tea in an effort to bleed out the excesses of New Year’s Eve seems like the perfect time to review my year of running.

At this point a normal, upbeat person would insert a line like And What A Year It Was! I shall spare you such vomit-inducing positivity but I will go so far as to say, It Wasn’t Bad.

I had planned to use my vast array of data visualisation skills to serve up a bunch of interesting facts in fun and shiny ways but frankly now that we’ve come to it I can’t be arsed. I might stick a picture or two in later but then again I may also start on the bag of Revels that’s lurking next to my mouse.

According to the Gospel of Garmin, 2016 looks a bit like this:-

I ran 132 times spending a total of 165 hours, 23 minutes and 29 seconds on the road (and trail)

I covered a total distance of 1802.58km (1120 miles) with a total elevation gain of 29,034 metres. That’s officially a shitload of hills.

I did all this at an average speed of 10.9km/h and burned a total of 137.262 calories.

I have no stats on vaseline usage or cumulative sweat totals but I can confirm I used an entire roll of surgical tape in a (mostly successful) bid to avoid nipple chafe.

Oh, and I got to see a few things like this.

And this.

And of course, this.

And not forgetting, this.

Every so often I found the time to smile. Sort of.

But not when this happened. When this happened I said some very, very bad words.

It was bit of breakthrough year for me in terms of personal bests and one significant first.

I finally broke the 16 minute barrier for my 4km time trial (15:37 on 14^th July) which was a big surprise (haven’t got near it since). I also managed to set new personal bests for half marathon (1:37:56 at the Gun Run in October) and marathon (3:47:40 at the Winelands Marathon in November).

More importantly (to me at least) I finally laid to rest my Two Oceans ghosts and can now proudly say I’ve conquered an ultra marathon. 56km/35miles in just under five and a half hours and I’m going to be stupid enough to go for it again in 2017.

For this year I’ve got a couple of goals. I’d like to get under 95 minutes for a half marathon and I’d like to break five hours for the Two Oceans Ultra. I’m also going to try and get an entry to the Puffer (an epic part road / part trail event that starts in the Cape Point nature reserve and ends up in the middle of Cape Town about 12 hours (if you have a good day) later. I wouldn’t mind breaking three and a half hours for a marathon but we’ll see how it goes.

The thing is…over the last twelve months I’ve realised that just being out there with good company and amazing scenery is really all that matters. Time is irrelevant. The memories are everything.

Hope you have a brilliant 2017 and whether your goals involve running, writing or shots of tequila I hope you achieve them all.