My back story

I was not an especially sporty kid. I swam with a couple of local clubs on-and-off between the ages of eight and 14 and played netball and field hockey for school. As a student I got into water polo, but it was only after having finished university that I stumbled onto triathlon and, eventually, running.

I did enjoy the triathlons. The high point was definitely representing Team GB in the European Age Group Championships in 2009 (Holten, NL) and 2010 (Athlone, IRL). But there was something about the simplicity and purity of running that drew me to it like a magnet.

I’ve never been any good at fixing stuff and the fear of punctures often put me off cycling. Swimming is awesome, but you need a pool! With running, the kit is super simple and you can just slip it on and zip out, straight from your front door, no matter how little time you have. The endorphins start flowing and BOOM! You feel amazing for the rest of the day.

So, running became my major passion and I’ve not looked back.

I continued to run until about six months into my first pregnancy and then pretty much stopped completely until my last baby was six months old. That was a huge break – over five years.

My awesome running buggy (a Thule Chariot Cross) was a 35th birthday present from my (very generous) husband and the key to unlocking a whole part of myself that I had stored away when I became a mother.

When I returned to running I didn’t have any proper trainers and couldn’t even jog for 30 minutes without stopping. But I felt such freedom, out-and-about with my happy baby, that I fell in love with the sport all over again.

I began to feel stronger and my competitive spirit was soon re-awakened, so I started to train for my first race back – a half marathon in September 2018.

I did every single training run with DD in the stroller. I had expected to feel really strong and “free” solo on race day, but actually I really missed her!

This gave me the idea to try my next race with the buggy, so at the end of the month DD and I lined up for another local half marathon. We finished in 1hr37 amongst enormous support all along the course and, to my enormous surprise, were called up onto the podium for a prize for fifth female.

That was a brilliant day.

Soon after, I stumbled upon the Guinness World Records (GWR) site and saw there was a “female half marathon pushing a pram” record potentially within my reach. It stood at 1hr27, so it would have been an enormous task for me to get into that kind of shape (still breastfeeding and within a year of giving birth).

Just as I was starting to believe it could be done, however, that record was broken in the USA and taken down to an entirely unrealistic 1hr22 (phenomenal!). My with-buggy half-marathon best is 1hr30 (March 2022), which I am nonetheless very proud of.

I joined my new running club down here (Blagnac SC) in September 2019, when my eldest daughter YY was just old enough to join the kids section. I loved having a club vest to wear again and it was really special doing cross country and other events with YY where we could both race on the same day in the same colours.

Boosted by my new training group and coach, I started to rediscover a bit of my old form towards the end of 2019, going sub 1:30 for the half marathon and sub 40 for the 10km.