That Fine Line Between Ambitious and Stupid

Full of the usual unrivalled enthusiasm that a post Christmas lull brings, most years I’ve tried to do some kind of running goals post for the next year. Then, at some point during the year, I follow it up with a ‘tail between the legs’ post with some, often valid, reasons why it didn’t quite go to plan.

Well this year I’m going to be a total renegade.

The goalposts have already been set and training is already underway, like some kind of teacher’s pet, starting their homework over the school holidays. More to come on my plans shortly. So why such a rebellion against the standard new year running goals and jumping the gun in this way?

2023 turned into a slow, steady and patient return from a joyless string of calf injuries. In some ways this lengthy, disciplined return to running the kind of distances to which I’d become accustomed really helped me appreciate being able to run again and work out what kind of running made me tick.

The icing on the cake came in June during my Endure24 escapades where I beat my 100km target, albeit only by 4km. Nothing spectacular, since it was over 24hrs, but the confidence boost it gave me was massive. It turned out when it came to decent length ultra runs, I was back in the game.

Endure24 is a lapped event, each lap being 8km, over 24 hours. Just for posterity, my 13 laps in total are handily summed up in this gaggle of pics:

The sensible thing to do would now be to build on this decent confidence spike and use my solid base to slowly add more events of this kind.

‘Nah, let’s not mess around,’ thought the unhinged, irresponsible side of my brain.

So that’s how I find myself already in training for the next challenge, with a total disregard for a suitable step-by-step event calendar for next year. I’m head first into my 2024 goals before 2023 has even finished.

There are many reasons for doing this now, not just wild naivety and getting carried away after a decent confidence building year in 2023.

I’ll be delving way more deeply into the details of this over the coming months but, for now, all of my running efforts are focused on my Circuit to City Ground Run in May 2024.

This will be a run from Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit to Nottingham Forest’s City Ground (in Nottingham, obvs!) and back again, a total of 300km all-in. 5 days’ running in total, with the middle day being Forest’s final home game of the season on May 11th.

That fine line between ambitious and stupid that I talked about is, right now, veering ever so slightly towards the latter.

I’ll be running this for Stand Against MND for a friend of mine, Sam Perkins, who was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 2019. He has been a massive inspiration to me over the last few years, taking on this diagnosis and setting up the charity. More details can be found on my charity page here:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/tom-fanthorpe-c2c

Right now, just looking at the page to read all about it would be great, I’ll do some more promoting to try and convince you I’m worthy of some sponsorship, nearer the time. It’s a fantastic charity led by an inspirational guy and the more people who read about it, the better.

In the meantime, I’m going to be working out what units I can convert 300km into, to make it sound less far.