The decision to go ultra.

I have made some big decisions in my time. I work in a job where I make potentially life changing decisions on a regular basis and I like to think I’m good at making the right ones.

So when I considered doing an ultra-marathon next year I did my research, considered what would be required of me. Weighed this up against the sense of satisfaction that will come from completing a 70 mile race and knew it was the right decision. The biggest challenge, other than the event itself, will doubtless be the amount of training required and how time consuming that will be, especially with a young family and a career on the go as well. But I honestly feel like this is the right time for me.

Telling people of my plans has been interesting. A mixture of responses, some abusive and some complimentary, but in the main, no-one seems particularly surprised. This means that either people have got bored of by running chatter and now tune me out, or, are no longer surprised at the challenges I’ll set myself. I hope it’s the second.

My previous big target for next year was my first marathon in April 2012, but now that will be a training run to assess pace etc for the ultra-marathon in July. The 7 laps of the ten mile course are run within a 26 hour window in Summer in Lincolnshire and now that dates have been confirmed I’m just waiting for entries to open. (www.fat-feet.co.uk)

Training has already started, with the increase in distance I will be doing in training, I’m planning on dropping a run per week and replacing it with a gym session to develop other complimentary muscles. Looking through some great resources (www.ultramarathonrunning.com etc) it also seems that increased core strength is important so that features heavily in my plan.

I’ve also considered losing more weight, but I’m not going to focus too much on dropping into the 11 stone barrier. I’m guessing that with all the running I’ll be doing weight loss won’t be a problem.

I guess that we all make decisions, some are big and some are small. Some are made easily and some require intense thought. But all decisions have an impact. This one is going to see me getting up earlier, training longer and harder than ever before. And to fit that in with everything else I’m going to have to take a leaf out of Dean KARNAZES’ book and run through the night if necessary.

But running has become such a fundamental part of my life now, such a constant that looking at this sort of challenge just feels right Like I said, I’m happy that I’ve made the right decision.