Ten years ago, a random bit of post landed on my doorstep that changed everything.
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motivation
Ten years ago, a random bit of post landed on my doorstep that changed everything.
This year has crept up on me, especially when it comes to my running. By mid-September most years, my race calendar would already be set in stone. But here we are, January 10th, and I still don’t really know what the year ahead holds. Well, except for one thing...
Last month, I won the Social Champion of the Year award at the Mental Health Blog Awards. But the truth is, I feel far from a champion.
2022 hasn’t really gotten off to the start I had dreamed of. As of the end of April I have run four events and cancelled five; two of those should have been ultras. You can put it down to fitness, confidence or bad planning but the simple fact of it all is that my plan for the year is not unfurling as I had hoped.
would be my first half marathon and arguably the worst in terms of race day experience. I ripped through my shoes like the Incredible Hulk, felt pain unlike I had ever before and ran out of energy/the will to live at about mile 6. I felt like a broken man coming across the line but I had done it; I had run my first half marathon.
Training through winter feels like its own right of passage. It is a time when your shadow, drawn long by the 4pm setting sun, is your only company in the golden cold light. You battle through storms so brutal they have names and vindictive personalities. The laundry pile of wet and muddy clothes seems to be unending and smelling worse with each passing week. The crisp frosty air robes the breath from your lungs and your steps crunch upon the hardened earth. You put on layer upon layer of clothes only to get one mile in and regret about twelve of them.
There are two moments that I say my running started; the first time I dragged my arse off the sofa and went out for a run and the Oxford Half in 2015. While it is hard to imagine a time when I wasn't running and blogging, I never actually wrote about my first half marathon as I wasn’t blogging about running back then...
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