It’s not my fault I haven’t been training, or eating sensibly over the last couple of months.

It’s my wife’s fault for also wanting to go out training, so it is my turn to have fun with the children.

It’s the weather’s fault, for being far too cold or raining too much, so that the idea of training is not a good one.

It’s the weather’s fault again, for causing football matches to be postponed at short notice, so I lose that training opportunity when refereeing.

It’s my job’s fault for meetings or travel getting in the way of ‘runch’, and clearly there is no other time that I could go out for a run.

It’s my baby’s fault for not sleeping through the night, causing me to have disrupted sleep, and just not wanting to get out there and get it done.

It’s parkrun’s fault for getting cancelled on a Saturday morning, and of course that means I am banned from any other running that day.

It’s the fault of being invited out for meals, and that absolutely meaning I have to eat far too much at every possibility.

It’s any shop’s fault for selling chocolate, or any generally ‘bad’ stuff, which means I have to buy it and subsequently eat it all.

None of it is my fault at all.

Isn’t it?

2020 needs to be better than this.

Immediate goals:

• Re-establish a training baseline.
• Healthy eating and associated weight loss as a result. I’m at about 85 kg right now. My goal weight is 75 kg. So, 1.5 stone in old money.

Both of these are achievable and under way. I am quite frankly embarrassed by the results of my last couple of training runs.

And I have felt incredibly awkward recently when any friends have asked, “How’s the sub 20 5k going?”. As the honest answer is, “Absolute f*cking terribly”. Don’t get me wrong: I really appreciate people asking. It’s just hard.

Ironically, my recent refereeing Observation marks have been the highest all season, so make of that what you will!