My grandchild has probably started school since I last wrote!

I must go back over my blog and see how many times I have said, I am starting training again, and I have a new goal, and blah, blah, blah..... nothing happens! Well, guess what, I am training again and I have a new goal, so, here goes again.

For new readers, don't bother going over the old stuff - I used to be a semi decent club runner, back when I was young, but if I am honest with myself, I haven't really put a huge amount of effort in for the last 7 or 8 years, with a couple of exceptions when I trained for Connemara and Prague Marathons back in 2006. Since then I have only added one more Marathon finish to my name, in 2008 when I ran Surf City over in California, and my age graded best result since then was a 23:10 5Km race in Dublin in March a few weeks later. Don't get me wrong, I have continued to run in all that time, just never with any effort over a period of time. Some excuses were valid, the odd injury in my ageing body, but mostly, the reason for the lack of continuity in my training has been idleness.

Since moving down to Argentina back in November 2009, I have completed in a few local races, and in fact managed three races in Ireland while on holiday back home, none of which have been great feats of running to even challenge my own M50 records, let alone anything else.

Well, now I will be 54 early in the New Year, my weight is stagnant at around 93 Kg (205lbs), and whilst a good 5 Kg than I was at the beginning of the year, its still 10 to 15 Kg more than I would like to be. But the biggest motivation to get back into running has been the success of my son, Liam Og, who took up running this year, and completed the Dublin Marathon in 4:24:11 in his first attempt at the distance. He also bettered my M50 times for other distances, so I have a year to get those back!.... I should point out that, obviously, my son is not in the M50 category, having just turned 26 last week, but he set my times as targets, so one way of making sure he continues to run, may be for me to improve my times - And look at setting new ones at M55 in 15 months time.

So, I looked for a goal that was not only achievable, but not too far distant that I would lose interest. Living in South America, there are less options, but the Santiago Marathon on April 1st, some 4.5 months away, seems like a reasonable, if challenging, target. My aim, to finish faster than 4:24 - In the short term, I have an 8Km race on Sunday 27th, locally in Avellaneda where I live. Last year, an unfit me, completed this race in the awful time of 47:23, age graded to 52.29%, and I will be hoping to be a fair bit quicker than that whilst not challenging my M50 best time of 39:10 set back in Galway two years ago. We shall see.....

In the meantime, this morning, with the temperatures hitting 28 degrees, I went for a modest run of around 3.25Km, which I was pleased with, especially with the heat, and I can gradually build the distance, and hopefully some speed, over the months ahead.