42 races to go to my Century

So I have been in the running game for nearly four years now and in that time I have managed to amass 58 races (including parkruns)

22 - 5K's - Parkrun's at Middlesbrough, Southend, Cambridge, Brighton and Bromley. The highlight being my PB of 19:21 at Middlesbrough back in March 2011.

9 - 10K's - Races at Southend, Leigh, Billericay, London. The highlight being a run in London with Amy for Cancer Research.

1 - 10 Miler. Great Run at a great race finished in the top 5% at the BUPA Great South Run and saw Ben Fogle. Made Lauren very happy.

15 - Half Marathon's. Southend (4 out of 4), Bristol, Great Bentley, Silverstone, Great North, Norwich, Bath and Cardiff. My favourite distance and lots of good races. Including 4 of sub 1:35. Highlight being the PB of 1:30:05 at the Great North Run and my 2 seconds on BBC TV.

2 - 15 Milers. 2 times Benfleet 15. Miserable cross-country. Not really my bag.

1 - 20Miler. My one and only 20miler near Colchester. Ran fairly well given my condition at the time but a weak PB and a distance I would like to revisit.

6 - Marathon's - Runs at Brighton, Rutland, Stratford-upon-Avon, Chester, Berlin and Edinburgh. A distance I have consistently failed to get to grips with, particularly with the need to run long and slow in training. Keen to improve but still not keen on training.

1 - Ironman - Incredible experience at the Outlaw in Nottingham off very little training. Having only swum half the distance in training, never swam in open water, only cycled half the race distance in training. I did manage to run well though and came home in just over 16 hours.

1 - Ultra Marathon - At the Two Ocean's in Cape Town. Rained for most of the 6 hours I was out there. Ran well early but the hills and fatigue at the back end cost me dear so final two hours was huge effort.

All that in 47 months. Not a bad little body of work. My PB's at 5K, 10K, 10 Mile and HM are all pleasing although I would like to improve on them all. The three of concern are my 15 mile, 20 mile and Marathon PB's. The 15 miler was cross country and so I need to find a road 15 miler to get that where I need it. The 20 miler is soft and should be bettered fairly easily, whereas the Marathon needs a concerted effort on my part to follow a structured programme to get my PB in line with the other distances.

As discussed in previous blogs, a method to compare times across different distances is WAVA which is expressed as a percentage. I would like to get all of the main distances to a minimum of 60% and so for the distances we are talking about I need the following:

15M - 1:53:00 (Current 2:06:41)
20M - 2:34:20 (Current 2:50:28)
Mara - 3:28:10 (Current 3:34:28)

I hope to achieve all of these in the spring of 2014.

By the time of the 5 year anniversary of my first race at Southend Half Marathon which will happen in June 2014 in addition to the 60% WAVA target I would also like to have run in 100 events. So in addition to my 58 races I need to find another 42. These look to be as follows:

- 28 parkruns to get me up to my 50 run parkrun t-shirt.
- 1 Ultra (The Thunder run 24hr race already booked)
- 2 Marathon (Brighton 2013 already booked and probably Shakespeare Marathon in 2014)
- 1 20 Miler (Probably Essex 20 in spring 2014)
- 1 15 miler (Road 15 miler in spring 2014)
- 4 HM (Southend 2013 & Great North 2013 booked and then Great Bentley 2014 and Southend HM 2014)
- 4 10Km (BUPA 10K 2013 & Canterbury 2013 booked and Billericay 2013 and BUPA 10k 2014)

All of which leaves one race still to be decided. I think I will probably engineer it so that Southend HM 2014 is the 100th race. The one big unknown is if I can run 28 parkruns which is about 1 in 2. I think after that it will be a case of reassessing what I want to achieve and the challenges and goals that I set myself. So all in all I have a busy 15 months to get me through to summer 2014 but the fitness and motivation are slowly returning.