I don’t know what it is, but I just haven’t clicked this year. It has by no means been awful: other than when I fell over and made a hole in my knee, I haven’t been injured this year, and thankfully I’ve had none of the illness woes that I struggled with at the end of last year. I’ve just sort of, lost my mojo.

Heck, it wouldn’t take much for this year to finish as my second highest mileage ever, though as things stand I’m on course for my lowest total since 2015. (The difference between my current second most (810) and my fourth most (732) is about 80 miles.)

I have still been running though, and I’ve been trying to find the enjoyment while running. Even if sometimes that enjoyment isn’t actually the running itself.

My hopes of a sub-40 minute 10k this year faded away as it became clear that I just didn’t have the mental fortitude to string together consistent training weeks: I could do 30 miles one week, and then simply not run at all the following week. My last two months or so of running mileages go as such:

30, 0, 13, 0, 9, 30, 0, 18, 5, 11.

That said, I did manage to clock a sub-20 minute parkrun when we visited Burnham and Highbridge at the end of September (specifically for that purpose). While this isn’t a huge achievement for me, I would have been pretty annoyed looking at my parkrun history if I hadn’t done it.

We also visited our 50th different parkrun; our ‘Cow’ (half a Cowell), when we went to Rogiet parkrun earlier in September.

I still have some races to look forward to, if I can get things together: the Brent Knoll race is one of my favourites, at the end of November. It isn’t the sort of race to worry too much about a time, but it’d be good to be able to have a run that I’m proud of, as I had to plod around this one last year at the height of feeling awful, in order to complete the Somerset Series.

After that is the Wellington Monument race, the weekend before Christmas, a local 10k that I’ve never done. Another one not to worry too much about time, it heads up a hill to Wellington Monument (surprise, surprise) before heading back down to the start again.

After that, in the first week of January, is the Stoke Stampede 10k. Weather dependent, this is genuinely quick course that I could attempt a PB on if I’m in good shape. It’s about 11 weeks away at the moment, so there is every chance that if I get my shit together, I could actually do well. If.

And after that, if I really manage to get my training sorted, is the Grizzly race in March.

It all seems in equal parts unlikely and perfectly achievable at the moment. But, I did manage to run my second Longrun Meadow parkrun of the year this week…