The Monday Musings Awards 2023 - part 2
From best short film, to best book, best vlog and best bit of radio ... here are some of my running highlights of the year
We put up the Christmas tree yesterday, so that end-of-year feeling is really ramping up. These days we’re at that stage of life where we’re looking forward to the kids coming home for Christmas, all of us gathering together, feasting and looking back at the end of a year that has been full of twists and turns.
For me personally, I started the year thinking 2023 was going to be my biggest running year ever, with the Self-Transcendence 3100 looming like Godzilla on the horizon. I ended the year with that plan in tatters, as regular readers will know, but with a new epic adventure placed up on the horizon: this time a plan to run 2,000km around Ireland (in 2024).
In last week’s Monday Musings I handed out my much-coveted awards for the biggest moments of the year in the running world. But what about some of the other things going on more at the periphery, both in my own running life and in the wider running world? Let’s hand out some more awards shall we …
First up, is Best Short Film. Online films are a great way for sponsors to showcase their athletes looking good using their products, so companies everywhere are at it, making films about any and every aspect of the sport they can think of. One that really stood out this year was The Right to Race, by On. They had a genuine story to tell here, which is partly why it’s such a brilliant film. It tells the crazy tale of a refugee from South Sudan, Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu, who ended up in Switzerland, where he got spotted out running by a local coach. Fast forward a year and this hitherto unknown runner is winning Diamond League races, beating non other than Jacob Kiplimo and running the fastest 3,000m time in the world. Wowzers. The film does a great job of telling his story, and features some amazing footage of him training in the bleak Swiss winter.
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