Run run as fast as you can, you can't catch me i'm the gingerhaired man! by Paulo23

My main plan for 2009 I think will be to run fewer races; this is partly because I am expecting to have an incredibly high workload toward the end of my university course, which also curtailed my running plans towards the end of 2008. Therefore it is likely that, as last year, much of my running will be done during the summer. In 2008 I ran more races than ever and ran in 21 events over the year and very much enjoyed doing so, so it does seem a shame to be saying that I am going to doing less races, but its partly necessary.

Another reason I plan to run less races is because I want to focus on longer distances than before, such as half marathon distance. In order to attempt to break my half marathon best of 1:29:52, racing less should keep me fresh for the races that are most important.

I got into some of the best form I’ve ever been in during the second half of 2008, getting into good shape over the summer and kept on improving into November, but have since let my fitness drop considerably, meaning that whatever I achieve this year will be like doing it from scratch.

I don’t have any races planned for January of February while I prepare for the Roding Valley Half Marathon at the start of March, which is my home town half marathon and will be my third year in a row racing it and I’ll be looking to better my poor performance of last year. There is another local race that I am considering doing in March, the Orion 15 in Epping Forest where I do a lot of training and I know how tough that one should be, very. Other than those races I don’t have any planned. I will look for half marathons to run but I know that there aren’t many locally so I may have to go a bit further a field. I would also be interested in races of 10 mile distance or thereabouts, and also 10k because it became my favourite distance to race over.

Although 2008 was a good year for my running, it started of with a few disappointing performances in February and March. Then I took a bit of a break before returning more seriously in the summer focussing on 10k performance and running 7 10ks between June and September, beginning rather poorly with a couple over 43 minutes and then rapidly improving in every race thereafter, except for an anomaly when I arrived late for a race in Battersea Park, culminating in an unexpected 40.07 at the Run Preston 10k on a day when I also ran a 5k and was just over 1 hour for both combined.

I also ran a personal best for 5k in August, taking over a minute off my previous best and moved up from 10ks to run my first ever 15k 62:51 in Blackpool and also ran a very hilly Garstang half marathon in a decent time. I then ended off my run of form with a personal best over 10 miles (67:42) and with a return to University relays with a very testing cross country race. Something a bit different was running 2k time trial in Niketown on a treadmill as part of a competition. It was early afternoon when I ran and I was 2^nd on the leader board at that time which was something to be proud of despite being well beaten overall.

Other than numerous racing highlights my training went better than ever, especially over the summer as I was able to stick to training schedules well, helped by a largely injury-free time and my training branched out with me taking on several different types training run and adding many new routes to my repertoire. However my brief experience with NikePlus Sportbands was unsuccessful as I found them to be useless in every way.