Well this won’t take long 🙂 In short I am a much more accomplished coach than I am an athlete but my running achievements have allowed me to coach from a technical and experiential perspective as opposed to just being able to read all the right manuals. I am not an exceptional athlete trying to tell you how I did it.  I am someone who has grown from a mediocre club level junior, to a reasonable standard club masters athlete over cross country, trails, road and ultras. 

I have competed over every distance from 800m to ultras and duathlons and love the structure of a 10k as much as I thrive on the uniqueness of off road or bespoke distance or multi-day events.  My biggest achievement was as a member in the winning National Cross Country team as an Under 11 (honest they used to race U11 juniors at Nationals back in the old days).

My worst race was a marathon but boy did I learn how not to do it which I will gladly share with anyone taking on this event for the first time.  I have coached an athlete to a 2.25.00 marathon which proves that you don’t always have to be able to do it yourself to coach it. I returned to training to compete in 2017 following a wonderful 24/7 commitment to two of my athletes over a number of years and am now chasing what I like to affectionately call OAP Pb’s. 

Being a Master50 athlete has its advantages including a lovely pottery mug and a District 10K medal. I have also completed a number of trail and mountain ultras, again placing due to racing in the Masters age groups 🙂 

I say all of this to emphasis my mantra to running, ‘Believe in the Process’.  As a coach and athlete, I am in a wonderful position of living by my beliefs and testing out theoretical hypothesis in real time.  I can draw parallels between coaching theories and application and have a real insight into the highs and lows of endurance running.  I am on the same journey as my athletes in fine tuning the process to get the best performances.

To see my running journey, check out my Power of Ten profile