What is the point of a ‘race season’?

When you are an amateur runner, in other words someone who does a bit of training and likes to run regularly, but for no real other point, what is the point of having a ‘race season’?  I mean, I’m never going to WIN any of these races, neither am I sponsored by anyone, neither am I in a running club. Yet every year I enter about four or five races, usually ending in a marathon.

Here I am in Berlin.

This is a very risky and dangerous activity. But it’s probably worth it.

Then I stop running for a  month or so. Then I start it all over again. I think it’s crucial. I honestly don’t think I would ever get my trainers on if I didn’t do this, and that would be a shame because once I get out there, I love running. Really love it. I just forget that I love it when I am lying in a toasty duvet.

This year, the Millard season is this: Hackney Half Marathon (May), Humber Bridge Half Marathon (June), London 10k (July),  Chicago Marathon (October).

I’d quite like to find another race in September as beady-eyed readers will have noticed that after the London 10K, which is on July 10th and looks like a laugh, but is 4 times shorter than the Marathon, there is a bit of a hiatus. I probably will. If only to calm my nerves. I get as nervous before a 10K as I do before a Marathon, which is crazy, but I do.

Actually I prefer my lonely training runs to the actual races but without booking into the races, I wouldn’t do the training. It’s a conundrum,  probably only interesting to other marathon bores like myself, but a conundrum all the same.

In terms of the BIG RACE SEASON  known as life, I have developed this bonkers and costly notion that I ought to do all the Marathon Majors. I’ve done London, Berlin and New York. Which leaves Chicago (this  year), Boston (2017) and Tokyo (2018). Hopefully. But then I will have done nine marathons, and I really ought to get the tally into double figures. Or perhaps do twelve. It goes on and on.  Here is the Great Wall of China, perhaps the maddest one out there.

You see?