With 5 days to do until my 5 marathon it’s that time where I have to set some personal targets. What am I going to be happy with on Sunday when I (hopefully) reach the finish line. Some would say that reaching the finish line should be enough and indeed it is – but I like to have a target.

My targets build on the work I did back in 2014 with Asics and Runner’s World and the Sports Psychologist that worked with us. It is based on a Gold, Silver and Bronze level of target setting. So for Newport – here are mine.

Gold: My gold target is to stick with the 4:30 pacer so I can aim for a sub 4:30 finish. I tried it in Manchester and got to 13 miles before the stomach cramps took me out (and I lost 30 minutes on the final 13.1 miles). It should be achievable if I dig deep and have no issues.

Silver: Sub 5 hour. Original Asics target from 2014. Sub 5 isn’t a bad target to have.

Bronze: Finish. If everything goes wrong then the aim will be to finish – regardless of time. Run, walk or crawl, I will get to that finish line.

But who cares about time? Should I care about time? A fellow Run Wales Champion pointed me to the following blog post by Sarah Russell, written following this years London Marathon. It really is worth a read and questions whether or not we should care about what our finish time is. Makes interesting reading.

http://www.sarah-russell.co.uk/single-post/2018/04/23/What-was-your-marathon-time-Who-cares

So, the final long run was Sunday, the final training run was today. It’s now time to rest my legs with a little 20 min leg warm up on Saturday morning. Then it’s on to the race. Bring on Newport.

Good luck if you are reading this and are also running Newport. See you there.