“You go to Angkor Wat? You want tuktuk?” “No thank you. I’m going to cycle.” “You need bike?” “Yes, I’m going to rent one. $3 a day the man down the road offered me. Is that a good price?” “No, no madam. We have bike. You take it. No charge.” The next morning the two [...]
People are always smaller when you meet them in real life than you image from seeing them on the telly. Maybe it's because his running achievements are so massive but I wasn't expecting Haile Gebrselassie to be the same height as me. Turns out I can't use the excuse of only having little legs as [...]
Over the past year that I’ve been leading my beginners’ running groups, my runners have taught me quite a lot about running. I arrogantly thought that I’d be the one doing all the teaching and they’d be the ones doing the learning, but it’s a two-way street. My beginner runners start off running for one [...]
My mum recently turned 60 and retired from work. Other than the three days a week when she looks after her grandchildren (my nieces and nephews), I'm pretty envious of her lifestyle now. She goes to the gym to swim three or four times a week, is training for a walking marathon and is getting [...]
I'm not a natural morning person. I should be - I go to bed early which you'd expect would mean that come 6am I'm ready and raring to go, but that's not how mornings happen in my flat. I go to bed early because I like to sleep, and close behind how much I love [...]
Yesterday as I was on my way from a swimming pool to a spin class I bumped into a former colleague. We chatted away for a few minutes, me wondering throughout quite how severe my goggle marks were. As we said cheerio, me to go and work up a sweat on a spin bike and [...]
I have a small patch of wall in my flat that has a lot of Post-its on it. They’re all covered in numbers that might at first glance look like I’m trying to break some sort of enigma code, but which are in fact splits. They’re splits for marathons I’ve done, long runs leading up [...]
It's all very well heading off to the Canaries for a couple of weeks of rain-free training during the winter months, but if like me you're blessed with ginger hair and don't have the bank account or sponsorship deals of a Kardashian, you might have to look a bit closer to home. A lot closer to [...]
Despite saying I wasn't going to attempt to do ALL THE RACES again this year, instead focussing on two main races, my calendar for 2014 seems to have quite a few events. In fact the year is barely a week old and I've already clocked up an 10k race in Regent's Park. It was supposed [...]
"Iron Man. That's kind of catchy. It's got a nice ring to it. I mean it's not technically accurate. The suit's a gold titanium alloy, but it's kind of provocative, the imagery anyway." This year I got an early Christmas present from myself to myself: Christmas Eve was the day I started training for this [...]
