Serpentine/London Marathon Store New Year's Day 10k

The best way to start the year: brief report is here

Serpentine/Runner's World Last Friday of the Month
25 June 2004

Before the race: pbs for nearly everyone to come! See here for my report

Chris Brasher Memorial 10k
Richmond Park 20 June 2004

Great medals, proudly worn - see report here

May 2004 Mannheim Marathon relay

A fantastic event - go here for the full report

April 2004 Serpentine/RW Last Friday of the month 5k

After the race with fellow RW forumites - see here for race report and pics

Royal Marine Commando Challenge: 30 October 2003

With Helen in her wading bird outfit: ready my muddy report.

Other news...

Running in Regent's Park with my work friend Sinead on the left

November 2004: Tough times

Since the summer, it's been hard going. After Trailwalker, I took a break, but then in August my mother died, which more than knocked me back. And work got enormously busy. So my motivation got shot to pieces. But I'm slowly coming back, having missed Brighton 10k. I've entered the Serpie 10k on New Year's day, and hope to be back up to that distance by next month. My knee is still niggling, but at the moment I'm ignoring it. In the meantime, I've marshalled at several Serpie Last Friday of the Month 5ks, which I love doing. 

May 2004: Back to running again!

After a year of injury - ITBS and assorted goodies - I'm finally back running again. It's been a year of frustration: I got injured just after my first club run with Serpentine Running Club, then had months of trekking round physios and podiatrists. I would improve a bit, try running, then the injury would return. Finally I found  a brilliant physiotherapist - magic Paul Martin of Physioworks - who has helped a lot with core stability, general encouragement and good sense. Paul is a physio with the British Paralympic swimming team, so he's off to Athens in August.

I also started doing some Pose drills, and while I haven't gone over to forefoot running, they have really helped build strength. This has been a wonderful month: my first 5k at the end of April gave me almost enough confidence for my first 10k last weekend (and Sheila's words of wisdom did the rest), and I've started to run with the club on Saturday mornings. 

How I started to run...

I started running in 2002: I blame my next-door neighbour, Cat. She'd got a book called 'Run Away from Fat', and I hadn't exercised properly for years...so we decided to give it a go at the weekend. This was also when I discovered that I live five minutes away from the wonderful Lea Valley - clear running for 10 miles down to the Thames or many miles more up into Hertfordshire.

Cat - not running

I was so scared that I secretly went out for 'run' the day before we were due to start...and I managed 2 minutes before keeling over in a gibbering heap. On Saturday we both went out, and this time managed three minutes before staggering to a halt. How, we wondered, does anyone ever do this??

The first time we managed to run non-stop to Stonebridge lock - seven minutes - we were overjoyed

The book had quite a tough beginner's regime, which I modified to the Runner's World one, then yet again to Bob Glover's programme. This is a ten-week programme, which starts with run 1 minute, walk 2 minutes, complete 7 times, and builds up to a 20-minute non-stop run in the tenth week.

The Lea and Stort canal looking up to Ferry Lane

For the first four weeks, I was still mystified as to how anyone ever manages to run longer than five minutes, but by the end of the tenth week I was there, and so was Cat. Those first runs taught me that the first five minutes is almost always the worst. Except on the bad days when your legs feel like lead.

Heading down towards Tottenham lock - part of  my usual running route

I built up to running five miles, but then got hit by ITBS - a horrible injury which makes your knee ache when you run because a leg muscle is yanking your patella out of alignment. So I had to take lots of rest, lots of physio and started lots of walking. Last year I only raced once, and it was through mud, water and more mud...but it was fantastic. You can read about the Royal Marine Commando Challenge, which I ran with my Runner's World forum friend Helen, here.

I've met lots of lovely people from the Runner's World forum - cheering them on at last year's Flora London Marathon, walking with them and socialising. My forum name is Meerkat, hence the name of this site. If you need any help with running, it's the place to go.

I'm only slowly coming back to running, and we've started a running group at work. Sinead, Saif and Stuart join me for runs in Regent's Park.

Stu, Sinead and Saif