As a child, I didn't really enjoy running. School cross country events involved running laps of a muddy football field in the depths of winter and otherwise the school didn't encourage the sport very much. In fact, I only began running when I was 12 or 13, when my younger brother joined the local athletics club and I didn't want to just sit around and watch, so I joined in and it sort of snowballed from there.

I first started out running middle distance, in the summer this meant the 400m and 800m and then cross country in the winter. Although I raced these events for several years and used to compete in local league matches, I was never particularly talented at these distances and found training didn't improve my times much. However, I did occasionally used to enjoy the odd 10km road race on the side. It was only in my second year of university that I decided to ditch the sprints and begin long distance running, mainly because a back injury made the shorter distances painful.

I remember my first group long run one hot summer evening, 7 miles through Sheffield's beautiful Rivelin Valley. This was the furthest I had run in a while and it hurt, a lot! My lack of endurance fitness, the hot sun and the unforgiving Sheffield hills sometimes make me wonder why I went back. This was though, the start of my love affair with distance running. I soon found I really enjoyed spending most evenings running through the streets and parks of the city, and it became a way to relax and socialise as well as to get fit. This, I find, is definitely one of the biggest benefits of running, that it can be a solo or group activity. If I hadn't had this group to train with then I almost certainly wouldn't have kept it up and wouldn't have discovered so many of the wonderful trails through the nearby Peak District.

(Updated July 2020)