From childhood, I was always into my sport. Predominately football and rugby, captaining my local sports team, Holker Old Boys, and representing my local town Barrow-In-Furness for multiple years. After leaving shcool I seemed to loose interest in the sport and found it difficult to fit training inbetween work and college. Quite frankly, I would rather have been in a pub all day on a Saturday than playing football! I started to put on a little weight, when my dad started running with the Walney Wind Cheetahs. One night, I decided to go along with him instead of going to football training and I really enjoyed it, seemingly having a semi-natural ability to run quite well. I had competed in several cross-country events at high school, where I always seemed to do well however being well behind some of the better local runners. I remember coming 2nd to last at the county schools trials!
Since that night I have remained fairly active with both running and cycling. The week later I completed my first park run in a time of 20:23, which having not ran that distance in years, seemed very good and the running bug began!
The following May 2012, with very little training I managed to come 17th in a Local charity 40 mile "walk" - the Keswick to Barrow, which opened up the endurance world to me and made me realise that I had potential. I imediately signed up to the Great North Run, but lacked determination and drive to make time to train. Several weeks of training beforehand and I managed a time of 1Hr 25mins. Despite this, I again had a long rest from running and dabbled in a bit of road cycling for 12 month.
When supporting friends in the K2B 2013, I became inspired to do more running. I was stood watching everyone digging in deep and trying their hardest for charity and it made me want to do it all over again. That day I decided..I'm going to do that next year and I stuck to my word!
Finially, I derived a 16 week training plan online and stuck to it religiously from Janurary to the day of the race. I met a training partner along the way, Dave Edwards, with similar prosperities to do the best he could do and we worked together in order to do so. In May 2014, I crossed the finish line of the K2B, in 1st position and a time of 4 hour 53mins, with Dave being only 40 seconds behind. It was a great achievement and made me realise I had the ability to do well at the sport and make a positive impact to chairties close to my heart while doing so! Kidney Research UK being that charity!
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