It’s that time again when it’s good to take a little bit of time to reflect on the year gone by, and look ahead to what 2022 has in store. We’ve done some great things together as well as individually, here are just some of the highlights:
- Walking the 100 mile Kintyre Way as a family in the middle of a heat wave in July
- Julie completing her first ultra race, then going on to win 100 km and 100 mile races 🤩
- Iain’s second place finish at the Leeds & Liverpool Canal Race
- The London Marathon
- Racing our first ultra-relay race together
- Managing big mileage in November and December as we both completed 2000 miles in the year.
- Lots more beside…
We didn’t get to do everything we’d planned… the Ultra Scotland 100, Stirling Marathon (again) and The OMM were all postponed due to COVID, but we still got to many more places than we managed in 2020.
Nothing says New Year like a good muddy run 🎉
Goals for 2022: Iain
I didn’t really set too many goals for last year – I was just happy to be able to get back to racing again, and managed to run pretty consistently throughout the year (except for a broken toe in March). I was very pleased to finish the LLCR130 at the second attempt after DNFing in 2019, and a second place finish was just icing on the cake. I’d hoped to get close to a 3 hour finish at the London Marathon – that didn’t happen by I still managed a big new PB of 3:26:17.
For 2022 I’ll be a bit more organised and having thought a bit about it (while out running of course) I’ve got the following goals for the year:
- A sub-24 hilly 100 miler – either the Lady Anne’s Way in January or the Ultra Scotland 100 in June.
- Run further than ever before (130 miles +) at The Cow Shed Backyard, depending on the competition of course!
- Complete a marathon in under 3 hours 15 minutes
- Complete the Ramsay’s Round
Check back in a year’s time to see how I get on!
Goals for 2022: Julie
2021 has been an amazing year of running I have loved the races I have been able to run, the people I have met and the solid running base I have established. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what I want next from my running and what goals to set for 2022 to help to get there! In the long term I would love to be able to enter the Lon Las Cymru Ultra in 2023 but I am aware I need to see how I get on at distances longer than 100 miles! With that in mind I have entered the KACR in July, with the goal of maintaining a fairly constant pace through the whole race with not too much drop off in the later miles of the race.
Our first race of the year is the Lady Anne’s Way 100 and my goals are to still be able to run at the end of the race and hopefully finish in under 24hr (although I think this will be weather dependent!). It will be interesting to see how Iain and I get on running 100 miles together as we definitely haven’t different strategies when running longer distances (for example Iain is definitely fater downhill than me but I am faster walking up hills than Iain!)
The other race I have in the calendar is the Stirling marathon which has repeatedly been postponed because of COVID. Iain and I originally booked this 2 years ago to run together with Iain supporting me for that distance of race. However things have moved on since then so we have decided to run seperately with Iain and I setting his own goals! I am hoping to put in some speed training and my goal is to finish in under 4hr 30min. I would like to be closer to 4hrs but I am not sure if this is doable as Stirling is quite a hilly marathon course. We will see how the training goes!