THE 2017 SCHEDULE (Tentative at this stage)

Normally this post would come up in November with plenty of time set aside to plan everything. Naturally I decided to get lazy last year and not post here for way too long, so whilst I had an idea of what I wanted to do putting down on paper or in digitalised form proved to be a step too far.

Obviously the entire schedule isn’t 100% confirmed nor even contemplated beyond the Gold Coast Marathon in July. Hopefully the body will hold up sufficiently to be able to do what I want to do. However the following is what I plan to do for the 2017 running year. I have decided to split it into a 2 part series, with the first part being 100% confirmed barring unforeseen circumstance, and the other part at this stage being overly dependent on other factors such as work to confirm.

100% CONFIRMED EVENTS (entries may or may not have been lodged but will in the coming weeks)

FEBRUARY 26: Wangaratta Half Marathon, Wangaratta, Victoria (21.1km)
APRIL 9: Canberra Ultra Marathon, Canberra, ACT (50km)
MAY 28: Rocky River Run, Rockhampton, Queensland (10km)
JUNE 4: Comrades Marathon, Durban-Pietermaritzburg, South Africa (87km)
JULY 2: Gold Coast Marathon, Gold Coast, Australia (42.2km)
OCTOBER 15: Melbourne Marathon, Melbourne, Australia (42.2km)

EVENTS WHERE I MAY ENTER

MARCH 19: Twilight Run, St.Lucia, Brisbane, Queensland (21km)
AUGUST 13: City2Surf, Sydney, New South Wales (14km)
AUGUST 27: City to Surf, Perth, Western Australia (21.1 km)
SEPTEMBER 17: Blackmore’s Half Marathon, Sydney, New South Wales (21.1km)
NOVEMBER 19: Queenstown Marathon, Queenstown, New Zealand (42.2km)

Again either list may change dependent on work commitments, financial considerations and general fitness. I’m hoping that the heavy training load for Comrades that I am about to commence won’t have a negative impact in the second half of the year. Keep in mind too that I’ve scaled back distances in some events where I’ve taken the longer option in previous years, with the local run here in Rocky a couple of days before the scheduled departure for South Africa meaning the half marathon (which in 2016 turned out to be closer to 25km than 21 due to a marshalling error) is not a realistic option. Ditto for Perth, where if I choose to run the event for a 3rd consecutive year the hope is to run just the half marathon in order to preserve legs for a serious tilt at Melbourne. Queenstown is at this stage very tentative pending work leave, given I’ll probably need to depart Australia on the Thursday in order to make it to Queenstown to collect the race bib.

As the year goes on I’ll at least be giving some content for each event I actually start from this list, so keep an eye out as hopefully 2017 will provide satisfactory outcomes, at least compared to 2016.