Since finishing the Edinburgh Marathon in May, there’s no stopping the Goal-den Girls who are out to prove that age is no barrier to taking up running. Group founder, Tricia, explains.

I have always run to keep fit, but I had never done a marathon – so in 2010 I decided I would train for a marathon in the year of the Olympics 2012. I am a UK Athletics coach in walking and running and I thought it would be a great idea if I trained a group of women of a similar age to myself. So I put an advert in the local paper asking for ladies who’d be 50 and over in the year 2012 who had never run before if they would like to train for a marathon. 

I had a huge response and we started training in October 2010 with a walk/run programme and trained to run a marathon in May 2012.  There are 25 Goal-den Girls and our oldest member is 67.   The training was hard at times in the wind and rain on Blackpool Promenade, but these ladies were committed and never missed a session. I can’t praise them enough.

We are a mixed bunch. The majority of us work so training was always in the evenings and early Sunday morning. Edinburgh marathon was a great experience – however on the day they had a heatwave, but we carried on and every Goal-den Girl crossed the finish line. We celebrated by going to a Italian restaurant in Edinburgh with our families and friends, there were about 60 of us altogether. We also hosted a Celebration Ball at Blackpool Football Club.

As for the future, we have already done a 10k and start training soon for a half marathon for October.  We also host our own run called the Goal-den Girls 10k – this is an all women’s run from age 15 upwards which will be held on the 24 March 2013 on Blackpool Promenade, this is an annual event.  All proceeds from this run goes to charity, and we managed to raise around £2,000 last year from the run. We also did lots of fund raising events throughout the year and have raised £30,000 for five local causes in the Blackpool area.