“Excuse me.” “On your left.” “Well done.” “Looking great.” “Zuper!” I ran out of things to say as I overtook a steady stream of runners, and I felt a bit awkward. I wondered if this is what it’s like being a really fast runner, though presumably they start at the front rather than at the [...]
My friend Liz Goodchild is all about setting big, scary-ass goals and setting off in their direction. She does this in her own life and helps others do it through her work as a life coach. Liz asked me if she could interview me for a series of interviews she does on her blog. Interview [...]
Today I got up at 4am, got a taxi to the airport and by mid afternoon I was swimming in crystal clear water off the south coast of Sardinia. I am on holiday. Hooray! Clearly the picture above isn't of Sardinia. That was taken on Monday night at Hampstead Ladies Pond. I'm being photobombed by [...]
There’s a lot of things that I’ve put on hold for the past seven months while I trained for the Ironman. I’ve already put one of these straight by travelling to Sheffield last weekend to go out with two of my oldest friends. It’s a date that had been in the diary for many months [...]
After not finishing IMUK a few weeks ago, on Saturday 9 August I decided it was time to have another crack at the iron distance. At 7:30am I got into Stoke Newington reservoir ready to swim 3.8km, cycle 112 miles north to Peterborough then run 26.2 miles round the city. This is the story of [...]
Most of us are scared of failure. Of trying something and falling short. It stops us from even attempting many things that we’d like to do. And it’s stupid. I try to help my runners get over this fear when I’m leading my running groups. Each week that they attempt a new distance I’ll be [...]
Before the start of the race I made myself a promise: I wouldn't end my race unless I absolutely had to and would keep going until someone told me to stop. No matter how much I wanted to stop, I would ask myself the question 'can I continue?' and if the answer was yes, I'd [...]
I've read the poem below many times over in the past few weeks. It says all that I want to say to myself as I prepare for the Ironman on Sunday. There are many times that I could have failed over the past two years since I decided to do an Ironman despite not being [...]
The Ironman in Bolton is getting unnervingly close. I spend my waking hours flitting between being nervous about what's going to happen on the day and telling myself that I can do it. I've made a list of things to take with me, a list of things I'll need on the day and a list [...]
Guest post by Jon Wood; runner, architect and writer. As I cycled up to Hackney Marshes I started to realise the enormity of this half marathon event. I was overwhelmed by its scale: 12,000 runners, some say 12,500. It was here, about 6 years ago I ran my first half marathon. That was a much [...]
