Hello, all

[marathondan]

Hello all. Here’s my brief running story so far.

I took up running in 2001. With my 30th birthday fast approaching, I decided it was time to do something active, so I entered the British Open 10K (now called the British 10K London Run). It was 0-10K in 5 weeks – I hadn’t heard of training plans back then. But I discovered that I could run, and enjoy it, (knowledge that had eluded me for the previous 30 years) and I had a great race.

To say I was hooked would be an exaggeration. But over the next three years I kept up a bit of training and entered ten or so 10Ks. Soon, I started to entertain the notion of entering the London marathon. In 2004, having survived 18 months of fatherhood and with plans for a larger family, I decided that in order to fit in the training, I would have to take the plunge there and then, or wait several more years. I took a deep breath, got myself a Golden Bond place, and started training. The whole experience, training and race, was a fantastic adventure and undoubtedly one of the best things I’ve ever done. I kept an online diary, which is here. (Hence my screen name, which is now rather fraudulent.)

The idea was then to keep up regular 10K and half-marathon running. I’m not sure what happened. One thing was that I took up 5-a-side football, which is not very compatible with distance running, and immediately put a dent in my training. Looking back, if I thought I’d be able to keep up the same quantity of training as pre-marathon, I was sadly mistaken. So the rest of 2005 saw a solitary 10K, a steady improvement in my football skills, and probably about one run a week – although I gave up keeping a log. A football injury before Christmas put me out for a month or so, but now 2006 is here and I sense the time has come for some renewed running effort.