Why Do I Run?

While I was assisting Lee with his recent world record preparation he asked me the question ‘why do I still run’. He didn’t mean anything derogatory by this, i.e. ‘you’re so old why are you still running’ or ‘you’re so slow why do you still run competitively’, he was genuinely interested in what made me tick. I gave Lee a couple of honest answers to his question but went away pondering on the question, because although I believed the answers were genuinely honest perhaps they weren’t altogether correct. So I’ve broken the question down a little to see if I can come up with the answer/s.

Why did I start running in the first place –

I’ve always loved playing sport, but I’m not actually that good at it. At primary school I was so slow at running (we only ran sprints) that every year, on sports day, I was demoted to the sack race. It didn’t get any better at grammar school, although I improved I was no footballer and couldn’t make the house team, let alone the school team. I did make the cricket house team, but more by lack of interest from others than by any talent on my part, which was apparent when I was out for two golden ducks in the only match I played. The one area that I did display any talent was in long distance running, I appeared to be one of the better runners in the year, despite only running on sports day and on maybe two or three other occasions.

In adult life I was again unspectacular at any team sports, better than average but no star in the making. I tried hockey and football but when it was clear I lacked any real talent it was time to revert to the only thing in which I had any potential. I’d been thinking about running for a few weeks and then I caught sight of an old school friend, Andrew Geddes, winning the AAAs indoor 1500m title. Well that was it, I was kicked into action and went along to join my local club, Hercules Wimbledon. Unfortunately they were shut, which is why I ended up around the corner at Belgrave Harriers.

My first training run with Belgrave Harriers was an absolute disaster as seasoned distance runners did to me what was all too common in clubs in those days, ran the new boy into the ground. Why did I go back to run again after such an experience? Something made me go back, I’d enjoyed the run, while I could keep up, and I felt I had something to prove. Besides I thought they’d been a bit rude to do that to me so I vowed to myself I’d do the same thing to them, which I did within a couple of years.

In my first year at Belgrave I tried many different running events and was pretty useless at all of them, but perseverance paid off and I became less useless over time. It didn’t matter how useless I was, there were always others more useless, or not quite as useless as me so I had company and someone to compete against. As I improved I started to beat the ‘not useless but not that good either’ crowd and with further improvement I started to beat people ‘who used to be good’. In time I improved further until I found myself able to compete reasonably well with some of the top athletes in the country but there would always be someone better than me, I never scaled the top of the peak. But it was this constant drive to climb up the ladder a few more rungs at a time that kept me going.

There were things I hadn’t even dreamed of achieving when I started running but as I improved so my goals became bigger. I didn’t achieve them all, but as my form declined so my years advanced and suddenly I was presented with a new lease of life as I entered masters athletics. So I hadn’t been the best in Britain, at my best, but I could be the best in my age group. I got close but still I haven’t achieved that one, however, with every year you get another chance and then at every 5^th year you’re at the start of a new age group. So ultimately there’s no telling how long I will continue.

Injury may eventually force me to stop, I really thought my time had come in 1998, when I couldn’t run for over 5 months, but somehow I managed to come back, and achieved much more since then. In 2005 I left Belgrave because I knew it was only a matter of time before I would struggle to make the A team, whereas Herne Hill had a number of other runners in my age group. I knew running with Herne Hill would keep me motivated and training hard to make their masters team, whereas I would only train hard to fail to make Belgrave’s team, so, just like the change from football to running it was time to move on from Belgrave to Herne Hill. I was proven right, being part of a successful squad has kept me motivated to train hard and we’ve achieved a lot together.

But what now, I’m miles away from London, so rarely run for Herne Hill, I have no team in Cheshire to compete with, how do I maintain that motivation. Well it’s all down to self believe, I still believe I have more to give, I don’t believe I have run my best, ok I ran my best times and some great races when I was younger but I still feel I have more to prove against my peers. Of course, every time I win a race outright, rather than just an age group win, it helps me to stay motivated. I find it hard to believe that, at almost 47 years old, I’m still able to give youngsters a good run for their money and the age grading of results helps to compare against those that finish significantly ahead of me but are around 20 years my junior. 

I now coach people to run and the people I’ve coached have had their own success. I don’t have anyone going to the Olympics but there are many people who can say they have benefited from the advice and training I have given them. Then there is Lee Riley, who has set three world records under my guidance. It’s a great feeling to be able to help others to achieve their goals, and even better to help them achieve beyond their goals. But, although I know I’ve helped, I can’t be absolutely confident that it was down to me, someone else could have guided them to their achievements and after all, it was them that ran to that achievement, not me. So this keeps me running still, everything I achieve in running, I know is down to me.

In life and work I’ve been reasonably successful, above average I’d say, but it’s running that has been the stand out success in my life. It’s also the cornerstone to my latest career choice, the more I run, the more I can use those experiences to help and inspire others to run or get fit, the more experiences I gain the more I have to talk about or blog about. And the more times I come back from defeat to attain success, the more I can motivate others to do the same, whether that be in running or other aspects of their life. But most of all I run because it keeps me alive, having something to aim for inspires me to work hard towards it, and that leads to all the other fringe benefits.

Why do I blog?

I started blogging back in February at the suggestion of a friend of a friend, who was into marketing, he was confident it was a way of getting people to know about what I had to offer. Whilst I’m not sure it has brought me any potential clients I know that some of my existing clients read the blogs and they have acted as inspiration for them. There are people who have picked them up via google searches, but that doesn’t mean they’ve read them and been inspired by them. The bulk of my readership comes from Facebook and I’m pretty sure most of those are my running friends. Thank you for reading, I know some of you are far better runners than I ever was so it’s nice that you take the time to read my tales of how it was for me. One of the things that keeps me writing about my life in running is that nobody knows the whole story about me, even my best man got some of his stories wrong at my wedding, so I’m putting the stories out from my point of view. Since February I’ve written 40 blogs and had 2500 viewings of them. The more popular ones seem to be about running with the top 10 viewings going to, in descending order;

2011 British Masters Road Relay Championships, a Personal View – probably thanks to my Cambuslang friends

The Mile

The Marathon

Why I Like Northwich From a Fitness Perspective, etc

Marathon the Final Tune Up

Illnesses and Injuries – to Train or Not to Train

Supplements

While I was Away

Memories of the Surrey 10000m Championship

Inspirational Athlete – Paul Evans

I’ve mentioned, over the last few blogs, that I’ve been fighting off a cold, it’s not really manifested itself properly, up to now. I was feeling a little run down at the end of last week but I felt ok to train. Ray and I had planned to go to Pennington Flash on the Saturday taking our respective ladies, it’s been a while since I made it up there. When I woke up on Saturday morning my throat was feeling quite sore and I thought I might be better off not running, however, after breakfast I was feeling well enough to give it a go. The weather was looking pretty miserable, it’d rained on and off for the whole week and I was sure it would be muddy at Pennington. But mud doesn’t deter me, I just thought it would affect the times. We arrived in the car park just as the heavens opened and chucked a lake full of water onto us, thankfully it didn’t last too long. When we got to the start, there was Bill and very few others, what a shame, xmas parties, xmas shopping and the weather must’ve had an effect. But as we waited, and tried to keep warm, runners came streaming round the corner to the start area, including an old friend of mine, Alex Rowe, who was down for a meeting of the Northern Masters. It was good to see Alex, but it also meant he would be aiming to beat me. I also noticed a young guy who looked like he might be talented but I lost sight of him as I talked to Alex, it was only when Bill set us off I realised he must’ve been standing next to me. As we set off I was joined by Alex, as expected, and this other chap. It was a solid start, the cold was playing no part in slowing me down and, in fact, didn’t affect me at all in the run, though the mud and strong wind did slow me down a bit (I had thought that conditions were so bad that this might be the first time I ran the course slower than 18 minutes). As we got to the gate, which signifies the start of the lap, the young chap upped the pace and soon pulled away, he seemed to have a graceful style that is somewhat lacking from my own running, he was long striding and confident and I confidently predicted it would be an end to my 5 race winning streak. Tom Doe was the young chap and he just pulled away from that moment on. Despite drifting further and further back I never gave up on the chase, after all I still had to beat Alex and while I was expecting to run post 18 minutes I still have a reasonable average time around Pennington. At the finish I was clearly 2^nd, nearly a minute and a half behind Tom, who smashed the course record (a fantastic achievement in those conditions), and almost a minute ahead of Alex. Not only did I run under 18 minutes, with 17:47, but it wasn’t even my slowest run around the course. I’d never heard of Tom before, I don’t follow general athletics, so I did a bit of research, which helped me to understand why he’d run so well, he was 5^th in the UK Steeplechase Final this year and has a 10k pb of 30:06, better than my pb, set 18 years ago, and 4 minutes faster than I have done this year, (though I took that from Power of 10 which isn’t always accurate, certainly they don’t hold my best times). Perhaps we’ll see more of Tom at Pennington, or maybe on the TV.