fitness – Runner's Words

Full circle

It’s time to return to the very roads where it all began, the scene of my very first ever 10k back in 2008. And this time I’m not alone.

I’ve literally lost count of how many of my friends are also out running on Sunday, with all of us having our own aims and challenges for the day, including three people running their first ever 10k. Two of the three are Jonny and his sister, both running in full MNDA colours and adding a few more miles towards our 1000 Miles for Motor Neurone Disease challenge.

111.4 / 1000: The Stockton Duathlon

The Stockton Duathlon on April 24th 2016 was the second event on our calendar and Jonny’s first, and with three participants alongside him it means following their successful completion of run / bike / run a fortnight or so ago we now stand at 111.4 miles, just under a tenth of our mammoth total in the bag. Here’s his story of how it all went.

26.2 / 1000: The Greater Manchester Marathon 2016

Round #1 is now complete, the Greater Manchester Marathon is officially done and dusted. 26.2 out of 1000 miles for motor neurone disease are safely in the bag. We’re finally underway people, and we’ve hit our original fundraising total already with 973.8 miles still go. You are all ridiculously amazing, aren’t you?

Marathon eve

For the third time in my life, here I am the day before it all becomes A Bit Real. D-Day. Endgame. The day of reckoning, just some of the phrases I have used in the past to describe the culmination of months of hard work as the practice finally becomes the reality. All those hours spent trundling round and round on my little feet are about to come in really quite handy as come 9am tomorrow morning I will be lining up on the Old Trafford startline with a simple goal: run the Greater Manchester Marathon.

That’s logistics

I remember writing back in January that I knew that even though that was the week that broke me I would have bigger weeks to come. This week was that bigger week. The biggest, in fact. Ever. The most I have ever and probably will ever run in a seven day period, the equivalent of running round the M60 twice. 70 miles, over seven runs, with an 18 mile practice marathon pace effort right at the very end. The trouble with that though, is the actual logistics of fitting it all in.

The hardest week

As soon as I drew up the training plan for this year’s marathon, there were one or two chunks that looked horribly daunting written down with the figures for the week staring me in the face. The general cycle of hard week / easy (ish) week as per usual, but with one or two notable…

New year, same old me

Happy new year folks! So here we are again, it’s time for the now traditional start-of-year blog. Hitting all these well-worn subjects from years gone by: Hope you had a good Christmas The weather is rubbish The weather has been rubbish all Christmas I’m doing loads of running again Most of this has taken place in really, really rubbish weather…

Stepping stone

And so it comes to wrap up the blog for 2015, a year quite unlike any other in my recent history. A runner since 2007, and a running blogger since 2011, this year marked probably the first time in my life when I started to maybe consider myself a cyclist instead. The events, the achievements and the blogs still…

Olympian footsteps

2015 has very much so far been the year of the bike, it’s safe to say. After drawing a line under a spring marathon all the way back in January, I’ve been out and ridden nearly a thousand miles on various steeds alongside my daily commute. And it’s all been rather fun. Long rides, short rides….

Sunset to sunrise: riding The Dunwich Dynamo

It’s been a long time coming this one. One of the last personal ambitions left since starting this little blog up all those years ago: a two-wheeled century. 100 miles on a pushbike. I’ve blogged about it, I’ve worried about it, I’ve put it off, I’ve blogged about it again. I’ve been rejected by ballots,…