I want to blog about running, but having never mentioned it on here I feel like I should give some history, so let’s go back in time….

Back in 2008 my old boss Steve Frater mentioned to me that he was planning to run a 10k race near me and would I like to join him.

I’ve just entered the Liverpool 10K on Oct 5th - that gives you plenty of time to train so how about it?

I laughed at him and said that I don’t run, I cycle, but for some reason I did start considering it and ultimately did sign up. (Looks like his original suggestion was in April and I didn’t sign up until August the 1st!) I must have caught the bug as I ended up agreeing to do a 5k race two weeks before this too.

Over the years I did keep running but I didn’t really get into a regular pace, sometimes I’d run with friends, sometimes not. I did the Santa Dash and a few other races, including the Tunnel 10k Run through the Mersey Tunnel, but at times I would still get out of the habit and would stop for a long while. I remember once even doing the Couch to 5k plan even though I would have considered myself a runner, just because it had been a while since I’d last run.

I would mostly run distances around 5-10k, and at that time I remember thinking 10k was a long run, not really a training distance but a race only distance. I didn’t have any plans to go beyond, I suppose I still didn’t think of myself as a serious runner. One day when running with friends we did two laps of Sefton Park – it’s about a 4k loop – and I said to my friend “do you ever do three laps?” I seem to remember her saying no, but then somehow the conversation got onto whether I’d be doing the Liverpool Half Marathon. Again I scoffed, a distance with “marathon” in the title?! No chance! Again it must have sat in my mind as a “why not?” as ultimately I did start looking at training plans and made a start on training.

The plan I used was from Runners Connect, it was a decent plan that took you from being an occasional runner to completing the distance. It involved running the full distance once in training and I still remember the moment I finished that run and feeling a great sense of achievement. The training plan must have worked wonders as I completed my first attempt at a half marathon race in 1:40:00 (exactly!) A time, in fact, that I’ve never managed to beat (and 12 years on probably never will!)

I actually ran the same event the following year (1:43:something if I recall) and did continue to run and do a few other races over the years that followed. I also started working for a company with lots of other runners, we were all remote so only ran together every 3 months, but it was good to have people I could discuss running with and have a sense of camaraderie. I never really had any aim for my running though and so would easily fall into periods when I didn’t run very much. It was after one of these periods when I saw a tweet from a friend; she was running regularly and would always post a photo of herself at the end of the run smiling despite the difficulties she encountered. On the 1st January 2020, inspired by one of her runs, having not run much for a while and barely above 5k I decided that I should do the 14-15km loop around the parks of South Liverpool that my friend Hakim came up with. I really enjoyed myself and made the decision to start running regularly again.

John McKerrell during a run, his head and shoulders are in the foreground wearing a "day glo" green coat, behind is a dual carriageway and bare trees suggesting a winter's day

Over the next month I started (probably during runs) coming up with a list of Goals, things that I wanted to achieve with my running. I also thought it would be a good idea to put them somewhere public to keep me accountable. For want of a better place I put them on GitHub as a Gist, but that turned out to be a good idea as it has meant that I have a full history of all the changes I made. You can of course still see the original list there but I’ll copy it here:

Running Goals

## 2020
1. Run a half marathon
2. Run a 5k race
3. Run for more than 2 hours
4. Run for longer than a half marathon
5. Run 500km in the year

## Beyond
* Run a marathon
* Run longer than a marathon
* Run a trail race
* Run a 5k in less than 20 minutes

For someone who had run a maximum of a half marathon, and hadn’t done that for 6 years, I’d say that was quite a reasonable set of goals and would keep me going for a while. As it turned out I managed a half marathon distance within a few weeks and also hit the “more than 2 hours” and “longer than a half marathon” (just barely!) Some re-evaluation was needed!

Looking at my initial edits I decided to add a smaller distance goal, to at least run further than I did in 2019. I also added goals to run a half marathon race and also a 5k race. I added some goals about “decently longer” than a half marathon too but put them in the “Beyond” section.

I managed to complete the half marathon race goal just days before the UK was put into lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic. As that year progressed I found myself slightly jealous of all the (mostly childless!) people taking on new hobbies and getting into exercise. I mean, I made the decision to get back into running before lockdown! I have to admit that lockdown probably did give me the opportunity to spend more time running, especially as there was no activities to take the children to. I managed to get through a few more goals and developed the list a little more, with the year ending as follows:

## 2020
1. ✅ Run further than I did in 2019 (153km)
2. ✅ Run a half marathon distance
3. ✅ Run a half marathon race
4. Run a 5k race
5. ✅ Run for more than 2 hours
6. ✅ Run for longer than a half marathon
7. ✅ Run 500km in the year
8. ✅ Run 1000km in the year
9. ✅ Run a 5k in less than 20 minutes
10. ✅ Run something decently beyond a half marathon rather than just a little bit
11. ✅ Run something decently beyond 2 hours rather than just a little bit
12. ✅ Run marathon distance

So not only did I do something decently longer than a half marathon, I actually managed to complete a marathon distance, on the last day of the year! To be honest I’d probably say that was an overly long list of goals, but you can see how I started relatively small and went on from there.

Now I feel like this blog post is getting quite long (and I’ve been tweaking it for 9 months!), so having taken you through my running background, I’ll pause here and in a future blog post will talk about how I’ve used the goals and how things have progressed over the last 5 years.