Already.Īfter a lot of time spent Googling I diagnosed myself with IT Band Syndrome. I spent the next six weeks resting, foam rolling, and doing some rehab exercises I found on YouTube. I had to come back after a couple of minutes though because it was hurting to walk. I thought better of going for another run so settled on a walk instead. The next day I went for a 3 mile run around the block. I finished in 22:05 – which I was a little disappointed with. So, I turned up at Oak Hill parkrun on Saturday morning, having hardly run for 6 months, and without doing any kind of warm up, and ran as fast as I could. This would give me an untrained baseline 5K time that I could try and improve upon over the first couple of months. I decided that the best way to start my year of running was with a parkrun. INJURY IS INEVITABLE (IF YOU’RE AN IDIOT) One year (and 850 miles) later, here are 12 lessons I’ve learned from all that running. I had a clear goal – I wanted to run a sub 3-hour marathon in April 2016 – and I was prepared to do whatever it took. This quickly fizzled out in November when the temperature began to drop.

The peak of my running training up to that point had been in October 2014 when I randomly decided to start running once around the block every morning and racing in my local parkrun every Saturday. I had done a little bit of running before, but nothing serious. I’d always had this vague ambition to run a marathon and after spending the whole of 2014 coaching table tennis to Sam for the original Expert in a Year challenge I fancied giving something a go myself. A year ago today, on Saturday 18th April 2015, I started what was initially called “Marathon in a Year”.

Year long running challenge