This is my corner of the web to document my running. It's really just for me to store some memories for the future but perhaps a few people will find it interesting here and there.
I'm now in my sixties and I've been running for decades. I had no particular talent for it, at school it was the usual cross country in the snow and occasional sports day.
I started running regularly in the early 1980s when I lived in Central London near Waterloo Station. I did a six mile loop from Tower Bridge to Westminster Bridge. I've no idea how long it took as I never timed myself, just ran at a decent sort of pace I suppose. I added in runs around Hampstead Heath or on the running track there. I led a fairly late night existence installing sound systems into nightclubs and playing in bands. Running for me was a way of staying fit and a time to just be free with my own thoughts.
This carried on until my partner Moira and I bought a house in Lee Green, South East London, just in time for the birth of our first child Robert in 1992. This gave me access to a new world of running routes, up to Blackheath and Greenwich Park and along the river path to The Dome (O2) when it was built for the Millennium.
Gradually my mileage built up and I was running a few times a week, my regular weekend route was about nine miles down to and along the river.
I was playing five a side football and I still never timed myself or ran any races. It was the biggest block of base training imagineable.
I had always wanted to run a marathon but never seemed to have enough time to train for it seriously with my workload and lifestyle. Now I know you make the time for these things.
In 2005 my mate Tim asked if I would enter The Great North Run with him to raise money for The Down's Society. That was my first big event.
I ran my first marathon in Krakow, Poland in 2007.
Since then I've run twenty plus marathons, some ultramarathons building up to my first 100 miler in 2017 and the usual mix of shorter races.
Running has given me so much. It doesn't come easy, it is almost always hard work but it has been so rewarding, even life changing. It has given me new confidence, fitness and mental determination.
