Sport has always been the thing I love. I just somehow ended up spending the last 25 years working in a different industry.
That wasn’t entirely the plan. I did a sport-related degree, followed by postgraduate study in exercise prescription with the American College of Sports Medicine, and worked in sports coaching. Then life took one of its turns, a different career took over, and before I knew it a couple of decades had disappeared.
Sport never really went anywhere. It just had to fit around everything else.
In 2018, a bereavement through cancer in my immediate family changed the way I thought about time. There are plenty of things we tell ourselves we’ll do one day, when we’re fitter, less busy, the children are older, work is quieter or the timing is somehow better.
I decided to run a marathon.
I’d love to say there was a sophisticated plan behind this. There wasn’t. It was more a case of finally grasping the nettle and finding out whether I could.
I could. And, rather inconveniently, I loved it.
Saying yes
Running the marathon started something.
I became much more inclined to say yes to things that sounded interesting, difficult or possibly a little beyond me. That approach eventually led to me standing in France in 2022 with a bike and five friends-of-friends, about to ride the Étape du Tour.
It was one of those experiences that makes absolutely no sense when you’re halfway up a mountain wondering why you’ve voluntarily put yourself there, and complete sense once you’ve finished.
But the thing I brought home wasn’t really about cycling.
It was the feeling that comes from doing something.
Getting out. Having a go. Meeting people you wouldn’t otherwise have met. Discovering that you’re capable of a little more than you thought. And accumulating experiences rather than reasons why this probably isn’t a convenient week.
Why? Why not?
Somewhere along the way, I started wondering how you help more people find that feeling.
Perhaps that’s the thread running through all of this.
Why?
Why not?
Why not me?
Why not now?
I’m certainly not suggesting that everybody needs to run a marathon or cycle up a French mountain. For somebody else, the equivalent might be turning up to a local running group for the first time, going swimming, joining a five-a-side game or simply finding something active that makes Tuesday evening a bit more interesting.
That’s increasingly the bit that interests me.
So why am I still running?
Busy Running started as somewhere to record my own training.
I’m a semi-serious amateur runner with a job, a family and all the usual competing demands on time. I like training properly and seeing what I’m capable of, but I don’t want running to become the most important thing in my life.
I want it to make the rest of life better.
So this diary records the races and decent sessions, but also the illnesses, abandoned plans, holidays, family life and weeks when everything goes slightly sideways. Increasingly, that’s what I think makes it worth writing.
And it has started to lead to other ideas too — ideas about bringing people together to run, and making it easier for people to discover opportunities to get active.
I’m not entirely sure where all of those will lead.
But then, increasingly, I think that’s the point.
Why not see what happens?
