Happy New Year all! I really cannot be bothered with the whole year in review thing that I did last
year, so instead I’m going to write about my new challenges for the year. If you’re not interested,
please feel free to leave this site now, I won’t get upset 
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Running
My first challenge for this came about almost by accident. At the end of the summer last year, my
Running Club started the ballot for who would get the 2 London Marathon places that the
club were entitled to. I figured there was no harm putting my name into the ballot as I probably
wouldn’t get it anyway. As it happens I was right, but my brain seemed to think that this marathon
thing was a good idea (possibly because it’ll tick off another item on my Epic Quest) and
finally, over the Christmas period I cracked and signed up for the
ASICS Greater Manchester Marathon the weekend before the London Marathon in April. So my first
challenge for the year is to train for and complete my first marathon 
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I’m not sure if this is the best idea I have ever had, but I am looking forward to the challenge. My
first weeks training didn’t quite go to plan due to being on holiday, having a poorly toddler one
day and being ill myself for the whole of the first weekend, but the second week was spot on and I
will try harder going forward .
Languages
I will continue working on my Mandarin during my Marathon training, but once the marathon is done, I will look at where I am and where I’m going more closely with the aim of setting a new Mandarin Challenge in April/May that will run for 3 months, probably with the aim of having a 15 minute conversation with a native speaker, but we’ll have to see.
After that, I have been thinking that it’s about time I started looking into Welsh. George is going
to have to learn Welsh at school, and I think it would be a good idea for me to have a good
grounding in it before then so that I can help him with his homework. Again, I will flesh out the
actual challenge element closer to the time but I’ll be aiming to get a good handle on the basics
for the first couple of years of George’s education 
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Other
Although I think that is more than enough to keep me busy for the rest of the year, I still have my
Epic Quest so I may look at that to see if there is anything I could sensibly achieve this year
on top of everything else, but with my life currently revolving around marathon training, this will
have to be looked at later .