The two or three weeks after a marathon are a funny old phase. 

Before the Berlin Marathon I’ve been almost fantasising about the chance to have a break from the structure to my training. 

I would day-dream about runs at an easy pace where I barely look at my watch, perhaps I even remember to take a photo out on a run to use in next week’s column... 

Then that day arrives and I find myself a little lost, wondering what to do next. 

I know I need to recover, but I also want to run. I’ve navigated the last few days through runs with friends and a bit of cross-training but all I can think about now is, what’s next? 

I’ve binged enough Berlin Marathon YouTube content now – it’s time to move on. 

In truth, I’ve been thinking about 2025 and what I want my running year to look like for a while now. There will always be local races that I want to enter but I do like to venture a little further afield and that takes a bit of planning... and budgeting. 

It’s a very tricky balance to tread. Whilst you don’t want to over-plan your race schedule, if you keep putting it off then there’s a danger that the races you want to run are already sold out, all the best/most convenient hotels are booked up and travel prices have sky-rocketed. 

I was tentatively researching other marathons recently and noticed that Seville in February has already sold out. I’ll cross that off my list then... 

My advice is, if there is a race you’re certain you want to do, get it booked and everything around it. Put it off at your peril as you’ll end up paying a lot more or missing out altogether. 

All being well, 2025 will be another year looking to whittle down my marathon time. 

Getting the result I wanted in Berlin has whet my appetite to have another go. I think I’ve finally managed to extinguish the narrative that I’d created in my head that ‘I’m just not built for marathons’. 

That’s rubbish; of course, there are distances that I’m perhaps more suited to, but I’ve learned a lot over the past year about what works for me in terms of training and fuelling. 

There are areas for improvement, clearly, particularly around the mental part of running a marathon.

I want to trust myself a bit more and have the confidence to push a little harder without the fear that it’s going to go horribly wrong as it has in the past. 

My experience at Brighton in April 2023 left a deep scar on not just my running but all-round inner self-belief. I can finally say that’s healed, it’s part of me but also a big part of why I have improved quite a lot since then. 

I know if I’m patient with my body, consistent in my training, then that 3:19:59 time in Berlin can come down even further. 

But the most important thing to remember is to have a lot of fun along the way.