Catch up and looking forward

It's been a while since I've last written anything on here but for want of something better to do (and to avoid writing my dissertation), I thought I'd fire it back up.
Since I last posted I've had my most successful season to date, with a lot of positives both in and out of terrain which will hopefully carry through in to the next few years.
With the help of a lot of people who I can't thank enough, I managed to finally achieve my goal of representing GB at a major competition by getting selected for JWOC in Tampere and also made my senior GB and England debuts at Euromeeting and SHI's respectively. Selection races went well for the most part and my emphasis on sprint training over the last year really paid off. Despite the races out there being a qualified disaster, I was proud of myself and the training I put in that year, especially having been moved out of the talent squad for some up coming athletes. Running times tumbled and my confidence in my own technique increased massively, something I've really struggled with in the past. I sacrificed a lot of time and effort to get out to areas/races which paid off and this is something I really want to continue with because I feel it could be easy as a young senior to drift away from the sport.

JWOC Sprint 2017

Whilst I did struggle for quite a while after the highs of last summer, with injuries and a severe lack of motivation or target, I feel like I'm back on track now and despite not having a massively specific goal. I'm back to enjoying training/racing and feeling a lot more positive about the sport in general.
I suppose the challenge now is trying to break in to the senior ranks which is a difficult task given the quality and depths of the guys in and around the squads at the minute. Patience I think will be the key as it so often is in sport and hopefully consistent training and performance will eventually pay off. It is however nice having little pressure on races at the moment and having the time to explore other areas of running I'm interested in, such as possibly trying to get some times on the road/track or hitting the hills for fun rather than focused training.
For now though, I'm happy training and racing to some extent for fun. I've set myself the aim for the year of competing in the English fell running champs but this could be difficult as I may not be around for the later dates in the calendar. There's also the world uni champs which would be a fantastic experience but will be challenging to get selected for, again, because of the quality of competition for so few places.
I'm hoping to write a short summary each week to develop a general sense of how training/racing is going and also to keep myself getting too bored of actually working for what I'm supposed to be doing so watch this space!