A few milestones on the horizon

At the moment I'm faffing around a bit with my own running: no real targets of my own, but quite enjoying going out and doing various events as they appear, without any great pressure about times or (perish the thought) PBs. However a quick look at my spreadsheet of races shows I've a few milestones coming up over the next wee while. I've done 99 10ks to date, so my next 10k will (somewhat obviously) be my 100th. With a bit of luck this will happen on Wednesday 4 May at my old stomping ground of Troon, which seems a very appropriate place for it. I would love to get back below 40 minutes but that looks well out of reach at this stage, and it won't help that I will probably have done the Highland Fling a few days earlier.

I'm also not that far away from my 100th half marathon. I've done 90 so far and am doing between 2 and 6 a year, so will hopefully reach this one in the next couple of years or so. In the mid 1990s the half marathon was definitely my favourite distance, and I managed to knock them out regularly in the low 1.20s or even faster for quite a few years. Changed days indeed - 1.30 now looks an aspirational target for me - although it is still a distance I really enjoy. I've only done the Great North Run once (in 1994, when I didn't have a great run and still finished in 1.21!) but it is definitely a race I would like to go back and do again. I also fancy doing a few more of the Scottish island races. I've done island races on Arran, Coll, Islay and Mull, all great wee events, but there are a lot of others on my 'to do' list such as Stornoway, Harris, Skye (is Skye still an island?), Benbecula and Orkney.

My 100th marathon/ultra will probably take a wee bit longer to get to, but will hopefully happen in the next few years. I've now done 81 marathons and ultras, doing between 4 and 7 a year for the last few years. Like the half marathon, there are lots of marathons and ultras I'd love to do. I think it's about time I went back to do London - the only 'real' marathon in the UK, or so a lot of the newspaper commentators would have us believe - which I have done 7 times before, but not since 2002. I'd also love to do New York again, although the race entry fee of 350 US dollars (ffs!) definitely puts me off. There's no way any standard road marathon is worth that. The Medoc Marathon has always struck me as my perfect event - a marathon with a different wine at every mile - and I am already thinking it would be a great one to do for my 100th. I'm also keen to keep doing Loch Ness - my favourite road marathon anywhere - and to go back again to visit my brother in the south of France for the French Riviera Marathon from Nice along the coast to Cannes. Of the ultras, I fancy doing the Comrades one year but perhaps surprisingly don't have any great notion yet to do the UTMB. I would however love to be around Chamonix when the event was on, and get a proper feel of what it is like.

So much to do....