Races were simple to find, to enter and a race calendar forms pretty early on. With my desire to get into races early, closely aligned with my natural desire to board an aircraft first (but that's another story!), I do end up with some good race numbers...the best has been "1" at May's Marlow 10k Trail. But whilst 5Ks, 10Ks, Half Marathons and Trails have been easy to knit together in 2014's plan the new plan for 2015 going longer via marathon into ultras is proving really pretty darned tricky!
The plan has been formulating around 5 blocks that would have taken me to mid-August:
1. Lay down the base over the winter, and a great guy from the running club is helping me plan that
2. A spring marathon - hopefully the VMLM2015 although there is a back-up plan but not so good on timing or being quite the event of London. Supported our club's runners in London this year and it was a key inspiration in my new challenges for 2015
3. Edinburgh Running Festival in May...I am now entered in three events that weekend and will decide on what the mix is to be
4. Endure24 in June as a solo...my first ultra
5. Followed in August by its sister race, Ultra12. Now, it starts going awry!
I will find out soon whether I have been successful in the VMLM15 public ballot or whether I am lucky enough to get one of our club places through UK Athletics.
Endure24 will be 2 weeks earlier next year so there's only 2 weeks from Edinburgh to Endure, so that impacts my choices at EDI.
I was going to enter Ultra12 today as it fitted neatly in August and I booked a holiday in July to fall between Endure24 and Ultra12. Buuuuuuut, in 2015 Ultra12 has moved earlier and is 18-19 July so smack bang in the middle of my holiday! Rats!
So, I've started my search for alternatives and found that spotting the right ultra is really hard as there are far fewer events without a lot of travel. I'm being helped in this by a really experienced ultra runner who I have been introduced to by our mutual, wonderful sports therapist / physio. She's come up with all sorts of events and some super race reports which are building my knowledge.
Then, bingo! When reading Trail Running magazine I spot an advert for the 100milerun.com Cotswold Challenge, a 100 miler across the Cotswolds in 4 days in August 2015 finishing outside Bath Abbey. Perfect. Or, maybe not. Back home, onto laptop, fire up the website and... somehow the Cotswold Challenge has moved from August to 5-8 June which is no flippen use at all!!!!
The search continues and I still have the most variable race calendar with so many potential combinations that I'm befuddled. Oh well, better go out and build that base then. Never know when I'll need it.
ttfn, mark
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