Never Give Up

That’s my advice. I guess I could stop there, short post! But I’ve been called many things in my life and “Gobshite” is one of them so I’ll carry on πŸ˜‚

I did a blog about going away at Christmas recently and while I was ‘away’ (which where I come from means in prison). Anyaways, I planned a fabulous January upon my return. I won’t bore you with all the details. Basically… Running, cycling, strength training. Preparing for the next marathon in April. Writing was in there too, I’m about 15,000 words into my third novel. It was going well, and on the 6th Jan I decided to run the 7 Hills.

This is a group of 7 Hills nearby, which I love. It’s only 11k, but as you can probably guess by the title… a little challenging. With 3k left, and powering downhill, I glanced at my Garmin, and realised it was probably going to be a fast time. That’s when I found myself on the ground. Luckily my head hit first, they say where there’s no sense there’s no feelingπŸ˜‰. I checked the nose was still in position and the tooth as they both hurt a little. After I’d lain there for a few minutes all seemed okay, so up I jumped to find a stabbing pain in the chest. I’ve been told I’ll drop dead running a few times so, I thought I’d better crack on, and see if I could finish the run. After I had run another 1k or so I realised it wasn’t a heart attack, but probably a broken rib. I returned home to find a cut head too and an eye already blackening, oh! and a wife, not happy I was doing it in the first place πŸ˜‚ Twas a bit slippy.

So, why never give up? Well, after 49 years of running I’ve had more injuries you could count, but I always comeback. I’d give Bob Dylan and Cher a run for their money πŸ˜‚ So, no matter where you are, or who you are, when times are tough, just remember, Never Give Up. There’s always someone or something out there, in your corner, willing you on.

I’m nearly 3 weeks in to this broke rib thing, got a serious cough and cold, but today I did 3k on the Elliptical, tomorrow it’ll be 5k and then first run next week. Maybe, just maybe, I might achieve my 3:30 target for that Marathon. Although my wife tells me I will die running, I tell her “Not today, though.”πŸ˜‰

Happy Trails, Folks X

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

A very busy few weeks lately. Not only getting the new novel ready for publishing, but there’s the running. Esther Chilton sent me the final edit of my book and as always she has done such a wonderful job. Now begins the formatting and final examination. Hopefully it will be published in the next two weeks.

Anyway… back to the plot. Yup yours truly is a winner (twice in fact) We had the Nothern Relay Championships here a couple of weeks ago and I found myself in the A team. No pressure then! Three in a team, and each one of us ran 5k each. Guess who went last of the three? When you take over as last man in a relay and your team is ahead, trust me its not fun haha. But best foot forward as they say. We won with a margin of five minutes.

The following day I had a 10k race, and I wasn’t sure how much the previous day had taken out of me. There was only one way to find out, I guess. An undulating road race with forecast rain, not something I was looking forward to. Luckily the rain held off and the undulations were not as high as I’d expected. Once again it was best foot forward. To have a team win one day is fab. To then have an indivdiual win the following day? Well what can I say! There was a bottle of red wine opened that night. πŸ˜‚

News of the new book has been social media’d. Hopefully it will be well recieved.

Have fun and happy trails x