Running review of 2020
I finished my review of 2019 with the following words: 'Welcome 2020, what delights will you hold?' Little did I know...
Despite this year being turned upside down and inside out by the pandemic, it has had little impact on my running, and for that I am thankful. I've managed over 2100 miles, set and completed several challenges and managed to avoid serious injury or illness.
There are two areas that have been affected. The first is the lack of parkrun. For the first time in eight years I have been unable to join with my fellow runners at 9am on a Saturday morning for my highlight of the week.
The second is the cancelling of organised races. I wasn't due to enter many this year, and certainly haven't been inconvenienced like those accepted for the 40th London marathon, but I miss the opportunity to run with others, the atmosphere, the supporters, the bling.
Hopefully both these things will resume in 2021 and I will enjoy and appreciate them all the more.
Some runners have struggled with motivation in the absence of organized events, but I have set myself some goals and targets to ensure that doesn't happen. Here are the highlights with links to the full articles I have written during the year.
My main goals were to run 2020 miles in 2020 (which I completed by 12th December), and to complete the 20202020 Challenge.
This involved running 20 different parkruns in under 20 minutes in 2020. I had only run a couple when parkrun had to be cancelled. I decided to run them alone and managed to complete all 20 with an average time of 18 minutes 52 seconds.
Another challenge I set myself was to Run The Deck Each day I turned a card from a shuffled deck and then had to run the number of miles on the card with Jack, Queen, King being 11, 12, 13.1 and Aces low.
Before our move I ran to all 72 Creative Folkestone artworks.
When we moved to London I was keen to explore. I heard about a local artist called Lionel Stanhope who had painted railway arches across South London and decided to run to all of them.
Next I decided to run to different places following the alphabet from A-Z. This took me all over London.
While running I noticed blue plaques on many buildings commemorating famous people that had been born, lived or died there. After some research I ran to all the blue plaques in Lewisham Borough and then all the blue plaques in Greenwich Borough.
I had begun to draw all my runs onto a large paper map of London that I bought for that purpose. It helps me to see visually where I have run. By now I had covered a significant part of the local area and this led me to try and run the whole of Lewisham Borough following my previous success in running all the streets in Folkestone the year before.
The Ravensbourne river runs from its source to the Thames and I ran the 11 mile length of it in May.
Finally I was invited to run the Capital Ring, a 78 mile loop of London. It took me two runs to finish, but was a great experience to see London and get to know other local runners such as Matt Shimwell and Paul Tonks. This took the place of the 75 mile run in aid of MAF's 75th anniversary that had to be cancelled.
Just two official events were possible this year; Ranscombe Winter Marathon and Betteshanger Viking Challenge Marathon. I also ran two virtual marathons - the Spring and Winter Ranscombe Marathons.
In total I managed to run 20 marathons (including 40 and 50 mile ultras) and 48 half marathons this year.
The one goal that I didn't achieve in 2020 was to break my 5k and half marathon PBs. I came within 2 seconds of my 5k at Dulwich, but never really attempted my half marathon.
This year I have read as much and widely as possible. In total I got through 145 books of which 10 were running related. I recommend them all, but especially the ones by Murakami, Tonkinson, Austin, Harvie and Jornet.
- Accidental Ironman by Martyn Brunt
- Running and philosophy by Michael W Austin
- What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami
- The incomplete book of running by Peter Seagal
- The running book by John Cornell
- Running's strangest tales by Iain Spragg
- Why we run by Robin Harvie
- Downhill from here by Gavin Boyter
- Above the clouds by Kilian Jornet
- 26.2 miles to happiness by Paul Tonkinson
The hardest thing has been not running with the Bald Monkeys Running Club since April. We did meet up for the Betteshanger Marathon and for a (non) parkrun in December but I miss the group. We still share on Strava but the Zoom calls we had during Lockdown 1 didn't happen again. Hopefully this year we will be able to travel more and meet up in London and Folkestone.
On a positive note I have met some wonderful London runners including Matt Shimwell and Paul Tonks who I ran with on several occasions.
I'm pleased with the year and have already set my goals for 2021:
- 52 half marathons in 52 weeks
- 5k PB
