And so I’m back. I’ve actually been back for a while and technically I never left. Let’s just say I took a detour. Life got in the way as life does. What with a building move at Graphic Warehouse and then basically rebuilding our entire workflow I’ve been busy.
Plus I got a hernia! That kind of derailed me as well. So much for becoming an athlete. Luckily for me life seems to be a winding road and you eventually go back to the path you always wanted to be on.
And so a recap is required
Right last time I updated here I was deep in a two step marathon training block. Two 16 week blocks to Manchester Marathon and I was hybrid training at the same time for Hyrox Glasgow 2024.
What the hell happened!? Well well well Glasgow Hyrox 2024 got cancelled i.e. I got invited to a wedding and well a wedding is much more important to go to than a fitness race. Alas this was probably the start of the end for me. Without a race for me to train for the whole lot of hybrid training became… unimportant.
Didn't you have a marathon to train for?
But wait Bob, you still had a marathon to train for! Yes yes imaginary person, I did still have a race to train for… but I did something stupid on the 24th of December 2023.
I did my longest run at 24k and flew through it, it was brilliant fastest run I’ve done at that length…. alas I learned a lesson. Recovery is very important.
Being Santa and staying up till 4 then getting up at 6 is NOT ENOUGH RECOVERY.
I got a groin injury that lasted for about 4 weeks. Combined with the Hyrox cancellation I just got completely derailed. I lost all routine, I remember driving up to the gym one morning and thinking nah fuck this and just turned back around again. Crazy how one minute you can be doing the best you think you can do and the next you’re back to where you started.
And so the beginning of the start of the loop of my eternal struggle
Before I knew it my weight had started to creep back up, 6kg in the first 6 weeks of 2024. And so the mountain of weight I had lost in 2023 slowly started to return. Marathon training did not go well, it was far less consistent than I had been before Christmas 2023. The lack of strength training just aggrevated all my niggles. And then the marathon came about
I remember watch this video from the running channel. When Tom finished this marathon, I was like I want that feeling of accomplishment. I did not feel like that when I finished Manchester Marathon. Actually the exact feeling I had was angry and resentment. I had trained so much and gone so far in a year to miss the time I wanted not by a few minutes but 34 minutes.
I finished in 4hrs 34mins something seconds, not that the seconds matter when you get up to the over 4 hours moment. I am not taking away from the accomplishment that is completing a marathon.
But what drives me is the point of pushing myself towards a target. To me I was so far off what I wanted to achieve it was a failure. I always knew I would complete the marathon. Always, there was no doubt. Mama raised a moaner not a quitter as all the memes are saying just now!
So if you know you are going to achieve something no matter what, achieving it doesn’t have that spike of dopamine that you need to feel success. It’s strange but it’s how my brain works.
And now we’re here in 2026. What happened in 2025 you ask? Well after 12 years of trying I finally managed to accomplish something I didn’t think I would ever do. So that’s got its own post.
