I wrote this post back at the end of December but decided not to post it as I wasn’t sure where my ankles were taking me. If you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know that they were taking me to stop-running-ville. Somewhere we’re still residing.

It’s taken a long while to get over this, and I’m not sure I fully have. I was completely bought into these challenges and to have them stopped has been rough.

It’s the feeling of committing to them 100% mentally, being excited to take them on and then having it taken away with something partially out of our control.

It’s left a bit of a void and certainly exasperated some of the challenges faced by all the change this last year. Training has been an excellent way of working through this, the endorphins help too.

In hindsight, we could’ve spent more time strengthening and improving mobility (consistently). In hindsight, we could’ve toned down the running when it was sheet ice. In reality, we didn’t, we pushed on doing what we were doing. Which leads me to still being injured 6 weeks on.

We’ve yet to figure out what the new sporting goals look like for 2019 as we’re still not sure how the injuries are going to play out. Although we’re beginning to think that it might be good to take it back to basics.

With a focus on building base fitness followed by some speed over distances that are a little lighter on the body. We could be looking to really target the 5km and 10km distances through the summer and autumn before building for something more like our original plans next year.

It’s weird to be repositioning goals for 2020 already but this hopefully makes for a long term plan involving injury proofing, improving strength and speed.

What kind of journey have your 2019 goals taken you on already?

Here’s the original post I had started to write:

Challenge One – 365 Days of Running #365runningchallenge
It’s a bit of a continuation of a 2018 challenge actually. Back on the first of August team Powered By Rabbit Food decided to run 100 days to celebrate 100 years of Polish independence. We completed this and then sort of, well, kept going. After 100 days in a row, a whole year solid seems like a logical next step, no?

Follow us on Strava where you can keep up with the latest and see where we’re at!

Challenge Two – Half Marathon
We’ve been indecisive about this for a little while now but a trail half marathon is now fully under consideration. We’ve picked something super early in the season (start of Febrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrruary) that we’re considering down in Krakow. It’s pretty hilly, pretty tough, but pretty exciting none the less. So that might be interesting.

Challenge Three – Marathon
Again, fairly early and something on the bucket list but once we’ve trained for a half marathon, why we might as well push on for a full one… Trail of course (Liam keeps saying that the trails are softer than the road so it’s easier on the knees…) and up here in Lubelskie close to the boarder with Belarus, that’s in mid-March. 

Challenge Four – ??
At this stage we’ve not really planned any further, we want to see how we’re feeling after the two big runs before deciding further. In consideration are a few different things including a multi-stage run or ride, a half ironman triathlon and a few more. We’ll need to see!