# Marathon Fail I had a plan. That plan was to [[2023-01-11 26.2 miles + 10 years|run a marathon in the year 2023]]. It's now 2024, and I didn't run a marathon last year. I failed. I tried. But I was a **long** way from achieving my goal. ![[strava_chart.png]] There are lots of reasons I can point to. 10 years on from running the London Marathon, my life is very different now. I have 4 kids and a lot less time to train than I did. I'm also 10 years older, and heavier than I was. I liked the narrative of running another marathon, 10 years after my last one. So much so that as 2024 approached and it was clear I wasn't going to make my goal, in my head I tried to reframe it, say that as long as I ran the marathon by 21 April 2024, I could claim it was still within the 10th year after my marathon. But ultimately, it was a arbitrary line in the sand, and the physical stress of running a marathon probably isn't a great way to generally improve my fitness. I'm going to aim for less big, flashy efforts, and instead try and improve my life and fitness, incrementally, with small changes. They will also have more chance of sticking.