I hate running….

That’s what I always said.

It’s hard

Your legs burn

I’d rather cycle

I always came last at school (well, maybe not quite last, but definitely in the bottom third)

I’ve always done sport, and been proudly average. Played water polo, volleyball, field hockey at school and uni. Nothing representative. After travelling around I started cycling to work once per week around 20k each way. Cycling is mostly enjoyable…

And anyway, I’m 6ft 5 which is too tall for proper running anyway!

And then…the company I worked for was big into the city to surf in Sydney. I had a team and they told me I needed to run. 14km, an iconic Sydney race. Trained a bit under sufferance (14k per week tops). Ran 6 min/k.

Next year ran a bit more. Ran same race at 5.22 min/k. Did a half marathon, hit the wall around 15k and ran 2.03. Vowed never to run a marathon.

And then I got roped in to run the NYC marathon for charity by my sister in law. That’s when I started running more. I thought I trained hard. 3 x cross training sessions per week and up to 50k.

Slight injury in the back of the knee doing hill sprints disrupted my prep, but ran 4.15 at around 6.00 min/k. That was 2016.

In 2017 the bug started to hit more. Took a few months off after the 2016 marathon, but trained for the Sydney marathon in September 2017. Was now running fast runs around 5 min/k and long runs at 5.30. Unfortunately got a fever 3 days before, but still ran 5 hours and was rooted….

The place where I sometimes buy shoes has a running podiatrist. I saw him in December and the main thing I needed to work was increasing my cadence from 160 to 175. Felt hard but after 6 months felt natural.

2018…started off very strongly. Running 3-4 days per week. Sydney marathon scheduled for September. Pushed the mileage up to 50-60k, then up to 70+ in August, 6 days per week. Ran the city to surf in 63 min at 4.35. That’s top 10% of males, and easily into the red group. Only minor soreness afterwards.

Come September I was running sub 5 min/k comfortably. I’d run 30k at 5.08, so was dreaming of a 3.30 marathon. I actually felt like a proper runner.