I noticed a thread called 'Targets for 2007' on the Troon Tortoises website (www.troontortoises.org.uk), and I thought it would be interesting to set my 2007 running targets as well. Thanks to Bobby for the idea (although I think he might have borrowed it from another website). So here goes:
1. West Highland Way: pb - 21 hours 39 mins; last year - 22 hours 14 mins; 2007 target - anything under 21 hours 39 mins. While I would love to beat 21 hours, I think that is probably a bit too aspirational to be my target. So I'll settle for beating my pb. Having said that anything under 22 hours would be great and under 23 hours would be pretty good as well.
2. National XC championship: 2007 target - to make the top half of the field. Although it may not sound it, this will be quite a hard one to do. From experience if I'm running really well, such as at Linwood in 2003, I'll make the top half relatively comfortably. However it doesn't take much to miss out. Last year at Falkirk I didn't make it, finishing something like 230th out of 400 or so. It's back at Falkirk again in February, and it isn't my favourite course, so I'll being doing well to achieve this.
3. Marathon: pb - 2.56 (in 1998); last year's best - 3.18; 2007 target - under 3 hours 10 mins. Call me a dreamer, but I actually believe that I still have another sub 3 hour marathon in me, although only if I give up all the ultra running and make a sub 3 hour marathon my main goal for the year. Realistically, that isn't going to happen, so I would be delighted with anything under 3.10. The last time I achieved this was at Loch Ness in 2004, when I ran 3.05.
4. Half marathon: pb - 1.17 (1996); last year's best - 1.27; 2007 target - 1.26 or better. Not much to say about this one - 2006 wasn't the best year for my half marathon times, so it would be nice to get back to something a bit more respectable. My best chance is probably at Inverness in March, as the WHW training tends to take over after that.
5. 10k: pb - 36.09 (1996); last year's best - 38.53; 2007 target - sub 38 minutes. A secondary target here is to beat 40 minutes in all races.
6. Overall - to run 2,000 miles in the year.
Well, that's it. As I write this it strikes me that I have a lot of work to do if I am to achieve any of these targets. It's less than 7 weeks until the National XC and at the moment I am not in particularly great shape, and have been struggling a bit with a post Christmas cold. I took the dogs a great walk today up Knock Hill in Crieff. We were out for more than an hour and a half and the dogs had a brilliant time, but it's not really the same as a decent run.
