I had the considerable honour in October 2024 of representing England in my age group at the marathon distance. I have to pinch myself that I’m writing that sentence. Although my running has progressed nicely over the past decade, I never imagined I would reach this sort of level. Before I reflect on the special day itself representing my country (next blog, coming shortly), I’ll recap here on the events that led to my selection. Following my 2:30 PB at Valencia in December last year, I then had the smoothest and best marathon block of my life; every session went […]

As I write this, we’ve just taken off from Valencia, on our way back to London Heathrow. Even if it weren’t for the pink bracelets on every arm and ‘easy run’ shoes on every foot, it’s unmistakably a plane full of tired, creaky, happy marathon runners. It’s time for my reflections on Valencia Marathon 2023. Planning and prep In some respects, planning for Valencia started several years ago, when I first became aware of it as such a rapid course. I very nearly took the plunge in one of the covid years but remember thinking that the cancellation policy looked […]

I was given a last minute place at Hackney Half a couple of weeks ago which meant (full disclosure here) that I ran under someone else’s name, thereby committing one of running’s seven deadly sins. I haven’t yet come up with a list of the other six, but perhaps that’s a blog for another day… I did it as a progressive tempo training run, aiming to finish in something like half my target marathon time for London in October. Naturally, I got slightly overexcited towards the end (big crowds, banging tunes etc.) and sped up a bit, finishing about a […]