365 days, 1016 miles...

So, a year of running is over.

After crossing the 1000 mile line a couple of weeks ago I had a full week off running in the week before Christmas, and then clocked up a few leisurely miles in an unusually mild and briefly dry Glasgow on Boxing Day.

A few laps of Dulwich Park on the 29th helped to loosen up the knees after 8 hours in the car driving back from Scotland, and then a lap of the lanes of North Hertfordshire yesterday brought my total up to 1011 miles.

Then today I did a couple of laps of Fairlands Valley Park in Stevenage, plus a little extra, to take the run over 5 miles and my total for the year to 1016.03 miles.

Before a rundown of the stats for the year, I want to say a big thankyou to my wife Sophie who, as well as tolerating my running obsession has also probably run at least 800 miles herself this year, ran with me in the Brighton marathon and the New Forest Half, and supported me and took photographs at the other races.

Thankyou also to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Phil and Sally, for all your encouragement and support, and well done to you too for completing your own marathons this year.

Thirdly, a big thank you to Michaela at Practical Action and Ceris at CLIC Sargent for your support, encouragement and T-shirts - and in particular to Michaela for the place in the Royal Parks Half and the great support before, during and after the race.

Fourthly, thanks to my brother for running with me in 10ks in Glasgow and London - look forward to doing the BUPA London 10000 with you in 2012 !

And lastly, but by no means least, thank you to all of the people who have sponsored me this year - with your help I've raised more than £1900 to date for the charities. They, and I, greatly appreciate your support.

And now - for the stats:

Total miles: 1016.03 (2010: 829.29)

Number of runs: 182 (2010: 168)

Average run distance: 5.58 miles (2010: 4.97 miles)

Average miles per day: 2.78 miles (2010: 2.27 miles)

Total time running: 6 days, 17 hours, 43 minutes, 21 seconds (2010: 5 days, 13 hours, 32 minutes, 43 seconds)

Average time per mile: 9 minutes 33 seconds (2010: 9 minutes 40 seconds)

Longest run: 20.01 miles* (2010: 13.1 miles)

Runs of 5km or longer: 172

Runs of 10km or longer: 49

Runs of 10 miles or longer: 18

Runs of 13.1 miles or longer: 8

Runs in Dulwich Park: 60

Runs in Greenwich Park: 31

(* the more diligent blog readers will remember I didn't run the entire distance at the Brighton marathon so my longest run was the 20 mile training run a couple of weeks beforehand)

And a few charts:

What next ? Well, I've signed up for the BUPA London 10000 next year. But no other plans yet. I might do one or two other races later in the year, but I think I'll have a year off from big mileage targets and charity fundraising. And then I might have a go at another marathon in 2013. 

But, for the moment, that's all. Thanks for reading!

Another landmark

After a week off, back to Greenwich yesterday morning for three laps of the park. A beautiful, calm day for running - cool autumn sunshine. But it's maybe the end of the shorts-wearing year and time to dig out the tracksters and long-sleeved shirts - the forecast is for much colder weather for next week including snow in Scotland.

My right leg, the one which cramped at the end of the Royal Parks, was still a little stiff and sore so it was quite a gentle run. Similarly today at Dulwich where I did four laps of the outside of the park and a little extra for 4 miles.

Yesterday's run took my total for 2011 so far past my total for all of 2010. It's quite satisfying to look back on how my mileage has built up since I started running (and keeping count) back in autumn 2007. Hard to imagine that back then even completing a one mile circuit of Dulwich was a struggle !

I've also been trying a few alternative fundraising tactics and last weekend emailed a bunch of CEOs and politicians asking for sponsorship. I wasn't expecting much of a response but I figured it was worth a try. So far, a few polite refusals, but no donations. Since I'm well on target to complete the running part of my challenge, it would be good to fulfil the fundraising target I set too, without having to fall back on pestering my long-suffering friends, family and colleagues again.

Having completed all of my planned runs for the year, I'm going to scale back the weekly mileage a bit but still hope to run 4 times a week - Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday/Sunday - and do 18-20 miles each week to keep me ahead of schedule. It will be more relaxing not having a training plan to keep to for a while.

My total for the year now stands at 833.72 miles.

5 laps of Greenwich

Today was the first time I'd done 5 full laps of Greenwich for nearly a year. Felt pretty heavy-legged to begin with but after a couple of laps I started to loosen up a bit and a few jaffa cakes and jelly babies helped to keep me going until the last lap. In fact I felt strong at the end and could have carried on beyond the 11 miles I'd done.

It was a nice day for running, sunny but cool and breezy, and the park was fairly quiet - perhaps a lot of people are out of London due to the bank holiday weekend, or maybe just having a lie-in.

Yesterday I did five laps of Dulwich at my planned race pace of 8 minutes 50. Didn't quite get the pace right as my second lap was 8:30 and then the last couple of miles were a bit of a struggle. But I'm running pretty well, at least as well as I was at this time last summer, and I'm hopeful of a reasonable time in the Great Scottish Run in Glasgow next Sunday. Hopefully sub 55 minutes, maybe sub 54.

I've kept to my training plan pretty well so far - I'm ahead of the mileage but I need to be doing a few more strength and flexibility exercises from here on.

This week I plan to do a couple of midweek runs as normal, a gentle 3 miles on Friday and then rest on Saturday ahead of the race.

Meanwhile, time to get fundraising restarted again.

Fundraising

As it's now only 4 weeks until the Brighton marathon it's time to ramp up my fundraising efforts.

 Firstly, a big thank you to everyone who has sponsored me so far - I really appreciate your support, especially since many of you have sponsored me in previous years. Practical Action and CLIC Sargent, like most charities, depend heavily on donations to support their work and they are very grateful for your help. In the current economic climate everyone is tightening their belts and charitable donations are one of the first items which people look to minimise, so many charities are really struggling to maintain their activities.

As well as asking my long-suffering friends and families for sponsorship, this year I am also looking to large corporations to donate. So far I've asked the chief executives of three organisations for support - Sainsbury's, United Biscuits and Marks and Spencer. I received a polite email from Sainsbury's outlining all of the charitable activities they support and saying they were unable to support me at this time - but nothing as yet from M&S or United Biscuits. I have had one anonymous donation so far though so I'll be charitable and say that perhaps this came from one of those companies.

I don't expect to have much success via this route as most companies already have specific charities they support at a corporate level and probably receive hundreds of requests from their own staff and from random people like me every year. However, I plan to carry on this approach - "if you don't ask you don't get", and I've also been asking if they have any promotional items they might consider donating as prizes for a raffle / quiz night I might organise later in the year.

This week's running consisted of a couple of lunchtime trips to Dulwich for 5 and 8 mile runs, and a 4 mile run back from the garage after I dropped my car off for its MoT, plus 12 miles in Greenwich yesterday - bringing my total for February to 64 miles and for the year to 271.5 miles. I've had a bit of a cold for the last couple of weeks so haven't been feeling 100% when I've been out running, and my knee is still giving me a bit of pain, but since after this weekend's last "long slow run" of 20 miles my training plan moves into the "taper" towards the race, that'll give my body a bit of a chance to recover.