First off as the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed I have changed coach to now being self-coached. I haven’t been coached by Liz since London Marathon. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after the disappointment of London and I didn’t want to waste Liz’s time by her writing me a programme which I wasn’t going to follow so I said that I would just do my own thing over the summer. Since then I have just kept it like that.
I’m really happy with the set up I have now. I’m doing most of my sessions with the Newcastle University squad which is really good as it gives me some good people to train with. Obviously as the New Year comes round and I start training for the marathon again I will go back to doing large portions of my training by myself again but at least I will be able to get some company during the longer sessions.
The other big change is my club! I have been with Chester for about 10 years now and have had a brilliant time with them, winning many North East, Northern and National medals, including the National 6 stage back in 2006. As many of you will know we had one of the best Senior Women’s squads in the country at Chester guided by the hard work of Lindsay Dunn and Barry Foster. I won’t go into what happened as its now water under the bridge but the team fell to pieces and one by one most of the women left to the point where there was only myself, Freya and the evergreen Heather Robinson left as active female senior club members. Then the other day I get a message from the secretary of the club to say that there had been a mistake in my registration and for unknown reasons I had not been registered with the club this year.
I have ran with Strollers since I was 16 and they have been great with me in the past including donating a large amount towards my fundraising earlier this year so it is nice that I now get to represent them and will hopefully do them very proud on the national scene. As this confusion and switch started back in April I am cleared to compete and score for Strollers straight away so my first race for them will be this Sunday at Heaton 10k, I need to get a vest first though!!
The last change is my kit sponsor. After 3 happy years with Mizuno I received an email from ADIDAS this morning saying that they would like me to become part of their team. Mizuno have been great to me supporting me with endless shoes and kit over the years but the ADIDAS deal is a good one which I would be silly to turn down. I can’t wait to get my new shoes and kit and start to represent such a great brand.
I have also been looking closely at another slightly different challenge for later next year. This is still very largely in the planning but I am pretty excited about it. I’m am going to wait until I know that everything is feasible before I announce what this is so again stayed tuned to find out more…
Until then, keep running, keep healthy and keep safe!