Wandering the World

My first marathon of 2024. Would it also be my last one this year, or would I manage to fit a marathon into the autumn? I think this time around I started training far too late as I didn't have a good base to be working from after having had an easy summer following quite a few months of reduced training from other non-running issues. My half marathon at the end of December was so bad, I knew I'd …

April 28, 2024

Manchester Marathon in 2022 was supposed to be my first spring marathon since I'd messed up there in 2019. I'd got my training in, it was feeling promising, but there were other issues going on behind-the-scenes in the last few weeks before the race. At first it seemed like I may not get to run it, then it was 'definite', but then ultimately on the Saturday I was due to travel to Manchester, I had …

April 16, 2023

Since that first time doing London Marathon in 2015 I've been wanting to do it again. After missing out on doing a spring marathon, I'd planned on booking a road marathon for the autumn so I would at least get to do one this year. My thoughts had been Chester, but before I could book that I got incredibly lucky and won a club place through the #ukrunchat Running Club. This time my training cycle w …

October 2, 2022

Last time I did a marathon in Manchester, it was the Greater Manchester Marathon. Now it's got a new name, a new route, new title sponsors, and it's been over 2 years since the last one in which I failed to get a new PB. Now I was going back there again, hoping my legs had recovered enough to complete this…

October 10, 2021

Five months of hard training, PBs, and positive results had finally led to this - an attempt at a sub-3:00 marathon so I could have another shot at the London Marathon as a BQ race. It was certainly a race of two halves.

April 7, 2019

A return to one of my favourite marathon courses, this time underprepared and completely unsure of what the end result might look like. Sometimes, just sometimes, the conditions on the day can surprise you and allow you to more than beat your goals.

April 8, 2018

One week after the Yorkshire marathon it was time already to run another: the inaugural Birmingham International Marathon. It’s not the first time the city of Birmingham have had a marathon. From 1980 to 1985 the city played host to the People’s Marathon. The return of a marathon to England’s second city meant it was a race I had to do, even if it only gave me a week of recovery time after the las …

October 15, 2017

I’m not really sure what led me to enter this marathon. I like to make sure I have an autumn marathon to do, even though I don’t like speed training in the heat of summer. This time I was training through the summer for big ultra marathons so I had the added incentive to find a marathon to do to see if training for ultras made any difference this time. Training was going well to start with. I gra …

October 8, 2017

Two races. Two days. On the Sunday for this bank holiday weekend I did the Rocket 5K in Milton Keynes as part of their Marathon Weekend event. It didn’t quite go according to plan as I’d hoped to achieve one of my running goals through it, but missed completely. Then, the day after this was the Milton Keynes marathon – my second marathon for 2017, and my ninth in the past three years (okay so it’s …

May 1, 2017

Another go at running Manchester, and another go at getting a marathon PB. Could I do it again?

April 2, 2017

My attempt at this marathon last year did not go well, mostly due to lack of training over the summer, too many races, and my inability to train well in the warmer weather. This year I wanted it to be different, I wanted to beat last year’s time at the very least and if possible run much more of it. Things didn’t go to plan though, and as I’ve mentioned in a few previous blog posts (okay, maybe se …

September 25, 2016

The Brighton Marathon was the first race I entered for 2016 and at the time I wasn’t sure if I’d do it just for fun, or if I’d attempt a PB there. I hadn’t even run the London Marathon at this point. Though months later I entered the ballot again for the London Marathon having enjoyed that one so much. I then started to question whether two marathons in two weekends for 2016 would be a stupid idea …

April 17, 2016

Up until this point I’d done three marathons as races. My first was almost a year to the day after I started running and I wasn’t overly pleased with it, even though it was a sub-4 hour one. Despite training to 21 miles I found that when I got to 18 miles, I struggled to continue running after having stopped for water. My second was the London Marathon, and everything seemed to go well. To start …

April 10, 2016

After my last two marathons I’d hoped that I would be able to improve on my time once again. Having improved my time by around 30 minutes between the last two I’d hoped I’d be able to shave another 10 minutes off my time. Following the last marathon though I had about a month off from training and then struggled to get back to it as I started to get ready for this marathon. My hope went from setti …

September 27, 2015

The London Marathon is one of the most popular events you could ever hope to enter. By some miracle I was lucky enough to be one of the ones that got a ballot place for this years event, and got the confirmation of this just weeks before I was due to run the Leicester Marathon – my first ever marathon. This meant I was fortunate as I could run just for the fun of it, or decide what charity I wante …

April 26, 2015

In around February 2013 I started a “bucket list” of things to do, and I wanted to try and do as many of them as I could as soon as possible. One of those things I added was to run a marathon. At this time I never thought I’d actually do it – I hadn’t even been doing any running. At the end of September 2013 I started the “Couch to 5K” program and continued up to 10K by Christmas. If you’re not i …

October 26, 2014