Where as 2012 was a journey in the physical sense of the word, traveling from country to country, 2013 has been a more personal journey. I changed my physical appearance by losing lots of weight. I changed my health and fitness levels by taking up running and successfully completed 4 x 10km runs including the British London 10km. I did the 5 mile run into the London Olympic Stadium, a few 5km runs (including a Santa Run) and even rode a marathon on my newly purchased bicycle. On top of all of that I gave up smoking as well and in all honesty that had to be the single hardest thing I did. 3 months later and I STILL get cigarette cravings. The upside is that I now hate the smell of stale cigarette smoke so although I get cravings, I do not want to smell like stale smoke. Go figure 🙂

Santa Run

I guess the big news for the year is that I now have a place in the Virgin London Marathon for 2014. In retrospect finishing the Marathon will be an incredible achievement. Before I got the placing I said that if I got a place in London, I would run New York in the same year so it looks like I’ll be running both London and New York next year. Seems I never do anything by halves!

2013 has included very little travel to date. A quick trip to Belgium via France and that was it. Most of the rest of the year has been spent working but I’m happy to say that I am off traveling again, if only for a few weeks. Next week I’m off to North Carolina for 5 days over Christmas, then back to London for a week before heading off to the Caribbean for a week on a cruise with one of my friends. My visited country count remains at 111 but the cruise takes me to 2 countries I haven’t visited before so I’ll start 2014 with a new count. All in all… 2013 has had it’s good points and it’s bad points but it definitely has been a year of personal journeys and I look forward to a fantastic 2014.

Crossing the line!