So my first year as a V40 went well, I finished 4th overall in South Yorkshire. 3rd would have been better but 2017 will be a good year for me I hope, the base training has been put in and the Cross Country racing will help for sure.

Norfolk Park was the toughest, because of the mud, Kiveton park was my best of the 4, really enjoyed that one, Cawthorne was good and the expected bad weather never showed up and finally Penistone was a good course, quite windy.  In the new year I plan to do the Yorkshire and National Championships.

As the Cross Country courses change and some are at different venues I can not compare previous courses and runs to what I did this year.

But last year I was typically running 6:30 minute miles on the courses and this year I was running between 6:07 and 6:20 minute miles so an obvious improvement.  I am self coached and lead a fantastic training group at Doncaster AC, as well as playing a big role in leading our beginner groups (part of my secret training) #nosuchthingasjunkmiles for me 🙂

Another benchmark all club runners can use is your run Britain rankings, and you can see that I had a handicap score of 2.5 during the cross country season in 2015, during the 2016 cross country season this has risen to 0.9.  These stats don’t lie and my improvement is down to our fantastic training group at Doncaster Athletic Club, and my increasing pride in wearing the vest.  Every time I wear my vest I think of the club and I give over 100%  I am also chasing Lee Milburn and Simon Wright as hard as I can!

I am ending the year in great shape and my targets for 2017 will be 1:18 for the half marathon, sub 59 for the 10 mile and to break 2:45 for the marathon, all massive PB’s if I can do them, would dearly like to go sub 17 at Doncaster parkrun as well.

2 more races planned for 2016 which means I will finish the year on 48 races.