Andy - how I started running
At school I was one of the ones at the back of the class in PE. To put it mildly I was one of the least talented physically, one of the last to be picked at team games, near the back in cross country and about as enthusiastic as a turkey at a Christmas party.
When I hit my teens I got into football for a few years which improved my fitness. Then I got a job, met girls and found out I could drink legally and any ideas of sport went out of my head. The football was given up and I drifted into a life of work, driving to and from work, eating too much junk food, drinking alcohol and smoking.
Hardly any exercise was taken at all for many years other than an occasional five-a-side game or a trip to the gym.
Then a trip to a hypnotherapist thanks to my Dad and smoking was given up. My last cigarette was just before 6.30pm on May 16th 2000, not that I remember it that well! There followed a period with the usual difficulties associated with such an event and all of a sudden 6 months later and 3 stone heavier I started to get some energy back. I wasn’t sure what to do so I started to go for a walk on Sundays with my youngest daughter, Charlotte, in her pushchair. We started off by walking to the local park, then a bit further the following week and a bit more and more until it was commonplace for me to phone my wife, Clare, from a point 6 or 8 miles away asking for a lift home. After a while it occurred to me that it was taking up a lot of my time so I started to run parts of the walk a bit more and a bit more to Charlotte’s delight. My eldest daughter, Jacqui, started to come out with us on her bike and to keep up with her I had to run even faster. Then I started to do a bit more and started to run in the evenings and some weeks ran up to 3 times. Most of my runs were along the river from Walton-on-Thames where we lived to Hampton Court and back which was a 10 mile round trip -nice and flat too.
Then one Sunday in 2001 I was out running with Jacqui cycling beside me when she suggested that I could run the marathon that we had seen on television a while back. I laughed but somehow she had sowed a seed in my mind and I ended up entering later that year for the 2002 race.
My first running race was the Reading ½ marathon in 2002 and my first marathon was a month or so later when I plodded round London. My running tailed off a bit after that as we moved to Dorset and I put on more weight. Luckily for me the area I moved to has some beautiful countryside and we made some friends near our home who were runners too and I got back into it. I managed to shift about 4 stone in weight (all excess) and take part in more and more running events with Wimborne AC running club. Since then I have taken part in about 30 marathons and ultras including the London to Brighton, Marathon des Sables and the Thames Meander.