My name is Stephen, married to Rachel, with 2 boys Ethan and Ryan. I recently joined your club in April. The reason I got in to running after doing no exercise for about 20 years I am sorry to say is not a nice beginning to this blog. In October 2014 my youngest boy Ryan, at the age of 3 was diagnosed with cancer. A Wilm’s Tumour on his right kidney, he had the kidney removed and that took away the cancer. He had 6 months of chemotherapy and finished his treatment in May 2015. He is doing very well now and we hope that is the end of that. During that time I had an urge to raise money for two charities that helped Ryan. Ward 84 (Children’s oncology ward) at Manchester Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group. I decided to run the Great Manchester Run in May 2015. 10k seemed a very long way to me then. At nearly 15 stone and not exercised for years I struggled to run to the end of my road without stopping, My first goal was to be able to run around Penwortham Holme without stopping, it took a few weeks before I reached that goal. Someone then mentioned Preston Parkrun to me and at my first attempt, I did one lap and walked home, very dissapointed in myself. On the 31st January I completed my first Parkrun. I completed the Manchester 10k and raised a nice sum of money for the charities.
This year I have been doing a 10k every month, again trying to raise more money. I have done the following 10k’s, Garstang, Mad Dog, Fleetwood Rotary Club, Mad Cow, and recently Appleby. Now when I applied for this race it was worded as “a fast, slightly undulating, 1 lap course”. When the beginning of the race is all down hill, it quickly dawned on me that the rest of the race was definitely going to be up hill, and it was. A very beautiful course in the Eden Valley though and I would recommend it, a friendly race.
So why join Red Rose Road Runners? My love affair with running hasn’t really took a hold of me, my 5k times have not improved much, my PB 29.56 at Lytham. Preston is 30.33 and my 10k PB is 1:09.03. Not much improvement in a year. The reason being I am not training enough! So after seeing Red Rose Runners at different races and Parkruns, and reading the website and how welcoming you are to all runners, I thought it would be a good idea to join, so I could run on Thursday evening’s from the Poachers. I have been three times now and I am really enjoying running with some very nice people. I have already beaten my Preston Parkrun PB and I am hoping that I will eventually attend some interclub events.
Thank you for reading 🙂