What happened when I ran 1000km in a year
Five surgeries in three years and a lot of training shoes
Like many stories, this one began in a pub. Two friends had just run the Manchester 10k, and we went to meet them. I hadn’t run it because I was in a limbo between recovering from one surgery and expecting the next. My partner ran the year before in the suffering heat and felt he hadn’t done enough training to run it again this year.
“Next year, let’s do the half-marathon.”
I can’t remember who said it, but it wasn’t me. 10k was my longest distance, and in recent years, I trained with a stop at halfway through, struggling with pain in my ankle that turned out to be an unhealed fibula when I had yet more surgery to remove the metalwork holding it together.
A half-marathon felt like an impossible dream.
I’m aware that plenty of people would consider a half-marathon nothing. They run marathons regularly, or longer distances. 1000km, what’s that? Well, the joy of running is that all our goals are personal, set to suit ourselves. The half-marathon was very intimidating to somebody who was running 5ks and just a few months earlier, was still trundling 2k to a nearby tree and then back again. I’d done a 10k the month before, in such heat that every inch of me chafed and sweated.
