I was thinking on the walk home from the office about choosing events. It was a pleasant distraction from thoughts of “bloomin’ heck it’s chilly” and “how can wind be so constant”. Sadly nothing could completely divert my attention from the sideways rain but you can’t have it all…

Anyway, my daydream was something like this. I imagined getting all my athletic friends in a room on January 1st, with a large wall calendar and some coloured pens. There was also cake and hot chocolate, and some calorie free cider – that’s the beauty of daydreams. Anyway, some of my friends were poring over the free events guide from Outdoor Fitness, whilst others were armed with ipads searching the Runner’s World events page. My oldest friends were there to remind me of our annual commitments and Jess Ennis offered to help me with my training. (daydream, remember?)

My new training partner

So after lots of suggestions, arguements, counter arguements and choosing the right coloured pen depending on event type, I had a full events calendar. It was organised around a realistic training plan of steady improvement throughout the year, split between running, mountain biking and combining the two. There were two events each month, I knew who I’d be doing each event with and my entire year was planned out ahead of me.

It was terrifying.

My daydream had become a daymare of organised fun and serious planning.

Luckily that isn’t how event planning happens. It happens much more organically, as it did today. I got a message from someone who said they couldn’t do an event we were considering because they were doing two others instead. I looked at the two others. I mentioned them to a friend. That friend was interested in doing one of them. I put something on Facebook, found two friends already doing it. Another friend saw the conversation and said they’d be interested…and somehow by the end of the day I’d signed up to another 10k, a 10 miler and am considering a few others events. I’m running with old friends, new ones and people I’ve never met. I wasn’t planning to do more trail runs, they don’t fit neatly in to any training plan and I haven’t thought about travel arrangements, my only consideration was “am I free that day” and now I’m not.

I now have 9 potential race numbers booked already, not a bad haul for the year but I’m by no means finished yet! I’m still on the look out for more events to enjoy, but I won’t need to look too hard because I know these things just have a habit of finding me…

(You can see the events I’m doing here)