The Road to LA 2028

For those following me on Strava or Fetch, you may have noticed my runs beginning with a number followed by R2LA28. This is to do with my latest run reset. It stands for Road to Los Angeles 2028. I fully embraced the Olympics, as I do every four years, and I wanted a plan to motivate my running moving forwards. 

My R2LA28 in no way means that I have my heart set on an improbable uplift in my performance worthy of a spot on Team GB in time for 2028. Instead I am just using those Olympics as a timetable for me, to get my butt into gear. 

I am now 40, and will soon be getting into last chance territory for ever beating my existing PB's. Four years seems an excessively long-time scale, but given my personal worst marathon time of 5:23:24 set in May this year, and my hour 10km in the Newmarket 10k in July, there is clearly considerable work to do. 

If you are going to set goals, they might as well be real stretch goals, I have thus gone well beyond a nice new set of PB's, and instead am targeting a range of PB's based around a sub 3 hour marathon. Here is a run down of the targets, along with my current PB's. 

5k - Target 18:59 - Current PB - 19:21 (Set 2011) - Time required 22 seconds 

5 Miles - Target 30:59 - Current PB - 35:08 (Set 2016) - Time required 4 mins 9 seconds 

10k - Target - 38:59 - Current PB - 41:44 (Set 2015) - Time required 2 minutes 45 seconds 

10 Miles - Target - 64:59 - Current PB - 1:10:39 (Set 2017) - Time required 5 minutes 40 seconds 

HM - Target 1:26:59 - Current PB - 1:30:05 (Set 2011) - Time required 3 minutes 6 seconds 

15 Miles - Target 1:39:59 - Current PB - 2:06:41 (Set 2011) - Time required 26 minutes 42 seconds 

20 Miles - Target 2:14:59 - Current PB - 2:36:24 (Set 2017) - Time required 21 minutes 25 seconds Marathon - Target 2:59:59 - Current PB - 3:34:28 (Set 2011) - Time required 34 minutes 29 seconds 

You're crazy, you're wasting your time, you don't have a chance, maybe some of your responses. I hear and understand your reservations. I am now 40 years old, I am carrying somewhere in the region of 4-5 stone more than my lightest race weight, many of these PB's are 13 years old. If it was easy, everyone would do it. 

All I would say is I need to embrace my inner American. Reserved, modest, realist Brit is not going to cut it. We are going to have to go full, chase your dream, if you can imagine it you can do it, over confident, back yourself yank. 

I was once told that people don't change, you reach adulthood and you are who you are. I have grudgingly come to accept that it wasn't so far off the mark as the years have passed. 

I now have to throw that in the bin, and believe that a leopard can change its spots. Where once I wouldn't give my full effort, where I would shirk the long runs, I am now a changed man and will pursue each run with gusto. 

So now we have outlined that I am going to have a complete personality and attitude shift from the previous fifteen years of available evidence, let us now move onto the specifics of the plan. 

One final point regarding the existing PB's. Those going back to 2011 may look less promising, but I was in the best running shape of my life as recently as 2017, prior to the arrival of the girls. I set my 20 mile PB then and should have pushed on and set a new Marathon PB shortly thereafter but took my foot off the gas, and it has never gone back on. 

Now to the plan. This will involve me running a minimum of 4 times a week on average over the course of the four years. 4 runs x say 50 weeks x 4 years gets you to 800 runs. We really start to get some momentum and maybe we hit 5 runs a week and then we are talking 1,000 runs before LA 2028 kicks off. Wouldn't that be something. 

Google maps tells me that SoFi Stadium one of the venues for the LA 2028 games is 5,466 miles away. Could we possibly run the equivalent of Rayleigh to LA? Ok, now we are cooking! 

These are all wildly ambitious goals, but that is what I need right now. Something to get my juices flowing, to force my running mojo back into existence. I ran my first R2LA28 run on Friday the 9th August 2024, and have now run 7 times in 10 days, an average of nearly 5 runs a week. I have only covered 25.7 miles (avg 3.67 miles per run) with a longest run of 7km. I have also required walking breaks, with 15% of that longest run, being walked. 

But we have started, and all good things require a start. I will blog monthly to hold myself accountable for chasing these super stretchy targets, come back at the end of August to see how I have got on.