my reason to run!

May 2004 and I was asked by work to take part in the Manchester 10km. Having previously run for my school and district ten years earlier, I thought this would be a challenge and a bit of fun as a group of us from work decided to do it for charity.

Doing the bare minimum of training (ie, not much at all) my goal was simply to finish, prefereably within an hour if I could. I finished in 57mins, the feeling was fantastic and I was inspired as to how much better I can do, and how much more I could enjoy it if I trained!

I moved back to Australia in July 2004; I entered the Riverrun (52mins) and the Nike 10km (49mins) and started looking properly in to joining a running club!

My new years resolution (and the only one I have ever kept to past January 2nd) was to commit to train. I joined the Brisbane Running Buddies and have been every Saturday (apart from hols) since. At the end of March I also joined Pat Carrolls runners, and now have an established training programme, which I am enjoying more and more with every run that I do!!

My motivation at the beginning of the year was to be able to run the Gold Coast half, something that seemed huge given that 10km was still a challenge. Now I am up to 40km+ a week, and increasing it every fortnight. I actually enjoy getting out of bed at 5am to go for my runs, something that seems crazy to a lot of people, and was very alien to me just three months ago!