“Uh, guten tag, my family and I are looking for sechs.”

Clark Griswold, National Lampoons European Vacation

Don’t panic, don’t panic.

Unlike my last post, which was Tolstoy in length but certainly not in quality, this one will be brief.

Let’s jump straight in and set the scene. At the start of every year, I post about the 12 months ahead. Expectations, goals, any Races I’m planning on doing. It’s not self promotion or humble bragging, it serves much higher purposes than that.

Firstly – and most importantly – it pushes me into actually having some sort of plan. Get it down on paper, make it real.

Secondly, the process of noting it all down works as a great motivator. January, by and large, is a shitter of a month. It’s long, it’s cold, it’s usually spent in poverty. Reminding yourself of what you have to look forward to once we’re past it can help lift the mood.

Finally, on a very personal level, I always find it an interesting read at the end of the year. Did everything go as planned? Did it go monumentally tits up?

Anyway, the 2026 version was called Smalltown Boy and was posted on New Year’s Day.

Yes, I’m getting to the point, which is – the plan has changed. Already.

I did have a hunch it might, even as I was writing it. The original plan, the one in that post, was to train for and complete the Solway Coast Marathon at the end of June. Which to be honest, I was really looking forward to.

However, a slightly cheeky throwaway comment in a work team meeting has changed things quite dramatically.

I’ve posted before about my occasional work visits to Poland – the vast majority of the team I work with are based there. Last time I was out there, I noticed a poster for a Running Event.

My Polish is a bit shit (I blame the superb English of my colleagues, meaning I’ve never had to use it) but even I could decipher that it was an advert for the Warsaw Marathon, taking place every September.

Armed with that knowledge, when it came to meeting with my boss to organise my next visit, I drop in a rather casual ‘well if you send me in the last week of September, I could do the Marathon while I’m there.’ Followed by a nervous laugh.

And to cut a long story short, they said crack on.

So, the Warsaw Marathon on the 27th September it is then. I did flirt with the idea of still doing the Solway Coast one as well, but decided for the benefit of my physical health that it was a bad idea. I’m not talking about tiredness, I more worried that my wife would kick my head in.

Thankfully, the lovely people at Solway have let me defer till 2027. They took pity on the thought of me being slapped about by an angry posh lass.

Training starts 8th June. Let’s do this.