What a year it’s been…wowsers.
I ran roughly 200 miles in training and races, including
1 x 18 mile of a team relay race
2 x half marathons (Berlin & Geneva)
2 x Spartans
1 x Duathlon
1 x Too Fat to Run Retreat (Greece)
12 x Parkruns
12 x #OBFRs
7 x 10K races including a monster one with hills
30+ CrossFit Sessions
I also managed in the business to…
- Do 20+ speaking gigs
- Get through to Semi Finals of Richard Bransons Voom Competition
- Win best blog in the 2016 Running Awards
- Host my first ever Retreat in Greece
- Write a new book
Who could have thought you could squeeze so much into just 12 months and as I sit here thinking about how to make 2017 an even better year, I thought why not have a look back at 2016 with a selection of my favourite blog posts.
- In January a whole heap of women are looking for motivation to get back into fitness so in 10 Easy (ish) ways to start running I gave some suggestions for the best ways to jump back in or get started, whatever the case might be.
- In March I had the absolute pleasure of meeting one of my heros, Yoga sensation Jessamyn Stanley…turns out she was inspired to start by me…funny this internet fitness stuff right?
- In April we all got caught up in a bit of marathon madness, I wasn’t running one this year, but a whole bunch of my ladies did. So I wrote What marathon running taught me about fear
- In May I headed off to run the Geneva Half Marathon as part of a press trip, and also wrote a post about the reality of going on these kind of press trips as the token “normal” person, in why you too should climb every mountain
- In July I wrote about the shocking incident of a lady being fat shamed in the changing rooms of her gym, this story made me so mad on so many levels.
- I took part in a fabulous race with 5 other awesome fitness bloggers, ticking off my “take part in a 24hour race” goal at the Spitfire Scramble. Next year I am going back to try it solo and we have 2 TFTR teams competing too, so watch this space
- In August we took a look at 6 reasons to join an online running club, as The Clubhouse continued to go from strength to strength…we finish the year with 204 members from 5 continents of the world.
- In September I started focusing on improving my strength as I joined my local CrossFit box, exploring the concept of What is CrossFit and is it Fat Friendly, I am still there 3 times a week…so it must be doing something right?
- October saw me take on my biggest most scariest challenge EVER!!!! Stand up Comedy!!!! And in my post Apparently I am Fat and Funny I explain how it feels to try this for the first time.
- The end of the year has been focussed on SPEED, as I led a pilot with 100 women to help test the theories of my upcoming book (have you preordered yet???) How I knocked almost 10 minutes off my 5K time explains all
Phew…a busy year right? And I doubt its going to get any quieter around here.
2017 will see,
- The launch of my Scream if you want to go Faster book, with an accompanying online programme which starts in January
- My first ever 12 week goal setting mastermind coaching service
- Training for Too Fat to Run coaches in the spring
- Another Too Fat to Run Retreat in Greece, we have 9 ladies signed up already
- And I will be doing my first international speaking gig in Cape Town in April
Who knows what else will occur, thats the fun and exciting nature of being a fitness blogger, or influencer, or entrepreneur…however you want to describe me.
All I know is I am the luckiest person a live to be able to make a living (only just) from doing something which inspires me daily and actually makes a difference to other people around the world too.
So the big question is, what are your plans for 2017…how are you going to make it an epic, adventure filled year?