Hello all,

I’m sorry, this post has been way overdue – I’ve been very busy at work, and did a bit of travel to San Jose and Borneo for work as well, and generally haven’t got round to updating this. Nothing incredibly exciting has happened, although for those that missed it, I DID run a 5,000m PB at Melbourne so that was pleasing, although I really wanted to break 14.00. The whole race felt like I was hanging on for dear life, what you’d expect from a marathon runner I guess!!

Hanging onto the field at the Melbourne Track Classic – 14.04 PB!

So what’s next? Well I want to run Chicago marathon and take some serious time off my marathon PB. I don’t have an entry yet, but currently that’s the aim. Why Chicago? Well the timing is good, the course is fast, but the real reason is I identified it as a race where I’ll have a big group to run with to 20-30km at 2.12 pace. I’ve never had the experience of a group to run with in a marathon, since my 2010 London marathon, so I’m hoping this will get more out of me than a solo effort on a fast course.

My next block of training will be geared towards that. I’ll do a mix of XC and road races in the build up, and I have committed to myself and my coach Ken that I will do better at the recovery side of things. This means less socialising, more sleep etc. This will be vital as I include some longer threshold runs and really focus on my long runs as part of my build up.

More recovery – Endura can help with that

Another thing I’m going to explore is the psychology side of things. I’ve thought about this in the past but what really hit home that I should look further was a presentation I experienced at work by a guy called Andy Meikle. Andy was an Ironman athlete but didn’t win as many races as he liked and started to wonder what sets the winners apart from the nearly-winners beyond fitness. He started to interview extreme high achievers – Nelson Mandela; CEOs; scientists; sportsmen; Zen Masters; even guys who broke out of high security prisons! What he started to discover was they had unwavering belief in their ability. His next step was to understand how this belief was instilled and how to apply this to himself. A lot of what he said resonated with me – lowering expectations to take the pressure off of myself, setting sub-conscious ‘limits’ on ability based on training/races, and finding reasons not to really hurt myself mid-race. I want to understand if and how I can change these things and see if I can get much more out of myself.

I have some time arranged with Andy to discover what is possible – I’ll update on that soon!

Take care y’all.