It’s a Family Affair

I love to run. And since the start of the year I’ve been running regularly again. Every day in fact. But I’ve kept the mileage low having just come back from an injury in the lead up to Christmas.

It’s been an ideal opportunity to support Rowena as much as possible as she's been embarking on a new phase of her Ironman training. She's finding the swimming exhausting and the cycling hard and exhausting, so I’ve just been doing what I can to help keep the running ticking over. We’ve tried to make this fun ‘cos I’m not sure the other two disciplines are! And yesterday was a great example when we hit my favourite route – onto the Oldham Way and up into the hills around Dove Stone reservoir.

For me, this was a milestone run for the year so far. I kept all my runs in January up to no more than 6 miles in distance, so as not to rush my recovery too much. All except for one run around two weeks ago when I did the route we embarked on yesterday. It’s around 8 miles or so, but quite hilly to begin with and quite technical in parts, and that last time a couple of weeks ago I had some discomfort in my foot again.

I’ve taken a lot of advice on what I need to do to come back stronger, which I’ll save for another day, but let’s just say I’ve been working hard on stretching, strengthening and conditioning and I’ve finally got some running shoes I’m happy with and it paid off yesterday. I did the run and felt great at the end of it.

It was also the first time Rowena has done parts of this route with me and she did great – once she’d made it up the first hill that is!

Once we got up there and we got onto the trails properly, you can’t not have fun! It’s got a lot of everything – rocks, water, mud, pine forests, impressive rock formations and yesterday the early morning light was amazing!!

Now, as much as she likes to claim that she does not actually love running like I do, the look on her face said otherwise. Every time and looked back at her she was grinning like crazy. Or maybe that’s just being with me! :-)


Today it was my son’s turn. Rowena was heading out on the bike (rather her than me) and so I decided to take Ewan to the same place, but not the ‘up in the hills’ version, but rather the ‘around the edges’ version of Dove Stone reservoir. Having said that, this was no easy run and to be honest I probably found it harder than the day before!

The wind was wild. You could hardly move in it. The rain was coming across horizontally in waves and whilst we were well wrapped up, our gloves were soon wet and our hands freezing. This was almost 5 miles of tough hard winter offroad running and my son is ….wait for  it… 6 years old!

I got Ewan into running last summer and it became obvious very quickly that he has an incredible amount of natural ability and the same love for it as I do. He just keeps going and he hardly ever complains. He always wants to do it and he never stops smiling. Actually he hardly every stops talking whilst we out running, but when he’s not talking, he’s smiling.

Yesterday was no exception. Most kids his age would have been crying 2 miles into that run, he was loving it. And by the end he looked as fresh as he did at the start and I swear he could have done it again!


Reflecting back on this weekend, I’m really enjoying my running again and can’t wait to start building the miles again now, but most of all I’m really enjoying running with the two people I love and I know that the 3 of us are going to build some great memories in the future, especially out on the world’s running trails!! :-)