Frustrating Achilles niggle means running all a bit uncertain but, in the hope I get past that fairly soon:
Sub 2:30 Olympic distance
Sub 25:00 10 mile TT
Do some good, long OW swims
Really ought to learn to tumble turn.
If the running really gets back on track, and ParkRun re-starts, then sub 19:00 for 5 km and I’d like to try and do the Clarendon marathon in under 4 hours.
Oh, and I’ve started to plan out a go at the North Coast 500.
My take on it is this. For 2021, I have a couple of ‘big pillar’ events that require a lot of training for but are easily bumped into 2022 if necessary.
SDW100 has no accom requirements for me, so very little overhead.
DBR has a one or two hotel nights at each end but nothing earth shattering and the ‘meat’ of the commitment is included in the fee (save for some bags and mandatory kit that TBH I need to buy anyway.)
I won’t be committing to anything overseas, and I will fill in the gaps between my two main races with anything that I can do ‘quick and dirty’ like short term entry or drive to a XC mtb event etc.
Also, for the next year, i’d rather my money stayed mostly in England/Wales, as at the the risk of being branded a Daily Mail reader, I’d rather fix our economy before anybody else’s.
I feel like safety wise, I can control the controllable easier if I’m driving and staying in the UK. Once flights, school holidays, hotels and the stress and emotional disappointment of ‘it’s on, it’s off’ are added to the mix, that multiplies the angst to a higher degree, that for me, just isn’t worth it.
I think training for big ultras will help me see other parts of the country in training and if that results in not racing, I still feel I will have gained more than just endless rinse and repeat SBR for something that may not happen.
Training has to be about adventure these days and family involvement (like our two Devon booked holidays) and making the best of it, rather than hanging my emotional and financial hat on the ‘all or nothing’ event.
That all seems like a sensible and level plan FP.
For me, it’s not so much financial commitment as mental. I’m happy to dig really deep to train for a goal, as long as i can see the start and end point. What i don’t want to do is commit psychologically to something that may not happen. Equally, if i’m even a few percent unsure of whether an event may go ahead, then i’ll be less likely to give it my all.
I think i’m a bit (sub consciously) self protectionist as well, which doesn’t help. I have got much better at failure over the years, but it still needs work on my overall outlook towards competition (which is invariably with myself, not placings in a race for example).
Understood. For me it went something like this.
Early road season on track. I was training for Newport Mara in April (IIRC), using a plan but also Bramley 20miler and Winchester 10km along the way. Bramley got canned due to floods and Winch went ahead and once Newport got canned I went back to 3 runs a week with a long one on the weekend.
Then ‘luckily’ through unemployment and DIY, I find myself not having much time to think about races but training when I could but by far, the thing that got me over the ‘hump’ of the year was committing to the Tron bike and badge hunting in Zwift in 6weeks. That was my ‘event’ for summer.
Then it was lurch towards Fan dance, then Eton Dorney mara but I have to admit the elation and let down of constantly looking fwd to something that got got snatched away was hard.
But now I’ve learnt to use it as a way of keeping my training irons in the fire, so if something does pop up (like Goodwood), I’m a place where I can at least get the thing done.
Making the most of short term race opportunities will be the way forward for me.
Agreed, I found virtual races were a sufficient replacement for real races in terms of driving the urge to train. I also can’t decide where to focus the first quarter of 2021 which probably means I’ll swing from one sport to another and not really achieve my goals 
. Might look at local TTs again for example.
I’m training for events to be pretty much underway in May, and have entered where they are open.
They start small, local tris and TTs but 70.3 Staffs in June is the first biggie.
The vaccine situation has made me a lot more comfortable. We should have the vulnerable covered by March, and that’s going to make a world of difference.
Jan/Feb could be very rocky with a post Christmas spike to dampen down, March should be better, April/May with most who are likely to be hospitalised/or at risk of life vaccinated and this thing dies back when it warms up anyway.
If we are still like this come May, then I won’t have a job, and we’ll have far more to worry about than our first world ‘my race has been cancelled and I’ve wasted my training’ problems.
The other thing is if races do go ahead and I’ve arsed about not training because I thought they wouldn’t then I would bitterly regret it.
To not run out of toilet paper post Brexit.
That would be the last thing Brexit will affect.
Because then we’d all die of constipation?
Well i could be wrong but i thought the UK was the largest exporter of TP in Europe?
Surely the ‘reality’ of any situation, is what the super market shelves and stock markets say?
1 million toilet rolls in a warehouse in Leighton Buzzard is no use to anyone 
We bought a box from ‘who gives a crap’ a month maybe before lockdown 2.
Its still going strong. You get tonnes in the pack. And don’t need to go to a supermarket.
#marketintelligence
We have visitors for Christmas, so will need to get a load in anyway!
Don’t worry, the NHS will get an extra £350 Million a week.
Sort that constipation right out.
This went up in a group chat with some mates a couple of days ago!
Edit - but rich calling it one of the toughest courses on the planet though. Its not that bad!
Move House.
Do London Oly in a decent time.
Don’t be such a Ucnt when in a bad mood.
