I became a "jogger" in about 1982 and graduated into "running" at the East London Half Marathon on an unseasonably hot day in March 1985, posting a promising time just under 1.30.
After that I got fairly serious about my running. My job on the commodities market in the city gave me a two hour lunch break and I replaced lounging about the office and the frequent trip to the pub with a daily run from a squash club next to London Bridge. Usually this turned into a race with several friends towing me along the Thames and eventually various circuits of the Royal Parks added in.
Road race times started tumbling, but lower leg injuries soon became the bane of my runners life, mainly due to weak "footballers ankles" that I had gained playing rugby on hard surfaces in my student years.
During 1986 at the age of 30, and as a member of Woodford Green AC, I got my half marathon down below 1.18 at the St. Neots half and ran a 10 mile in less than 58 minutes on an airfield. I also was a member of a corporate team that won the Emil Zatopek challenge relay in the city two years running. As this was organised by David Bedford and based at Cannons Health Club, we felt pretty good about it at the time!
It is fair to say that my attempts to keep running since that "high" have represented a steady decline in times and running volume, with a few high spots. It didn't help that my club running career in the UK stopped dead in 1987 when I took a job in Geneva, Switzerland.
I waited until my 43rd year before running a marathon, London, in 1998 on a charity bond place.
I repeated the dose in 2000 when to my shock I actually got in on the ballot. My times of 3.46 and 3.50 are probably "good for my age" but way below the potential I showed in my early thirties. Oh well!
So this year, having not run in more than 4 competitive races in 10 years, I've decided, at the age of 50 to take on another marathon, in Lausanne on October.
No comments:
Post a Comment