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January 2025 Progress

I am covering January a little early because we have just had the last parkrun of January so it is a good time to asses my progress against my time based goals, even if the progress goals could be better judged at the end of the month.

parkrun times are all I have to go with regards to outcome goals and I have progressed my post illness PB from 17:35 to 17:21. I should also note that the 17:21 was run with the start as my 1k and then 1 mile PBs and just hanging on... yeah not great to do the first km in 16 minute flat pace according to Strava. There has also been much more consistency with my parkrun times, they are trending downwards with my times getting consistently quicker. I really feel I have a big PB in my legs and just need the competition, weather and pacing to be right. 

The above times set me up nicely for my target Half Marathon and mean my predicted finish time, in comparable conditions, would be sub 80.... something for me to wrap my head around as my current PB (on a tough course is 125 and before that I had never broken 90!). 

Process goals, well I am staying on top of my diet and strength training and have been doing really well with both. I am loosely aiming for 3000 miles in the year (subject to illness and injury where I can sub in cross training). And that is going well as well, with Sunday as a rest day I will be on 244 miles on 26th January with a target of 213 miles (though I will need to taper for the above half). I am probably on target to run my second highest ever volume month and honestly last time included so much with the daughter on her scooter and the dog that the average pace was around 12 minutes per mile, this month is currently closer to 9 minutes per mile. 

I have been pretty good with the mental training but should do better with visualisations and would like to do better with breathwork training. 

I also set out this year to try new things and help others. I continue to volunteer at parkrun, my club and the British Dupuytren's society and have agreed to coach a colleague to his first marathon in April. For trying new things I have tried some new training paces, not a fan, and also a few new podcasts, some interesting content but nothing really to report. 

So far things are going to plan, hopefully I can get a few breakthroughs in Feb, would love to get the sub 17 monkey off my back (though have only really been close once) and would love to lose some weight (not make any real effort and currently a stone heavier than this time last year, but my jeans are falling down!). 


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