In 2003 I joined the British Army.  This was my rein­tro­duc­tion to com­pet­i­tive sport after an 8 year break dur­ing which time I had man­aged to put on a lot of weight.

In 2005 I com­pleted the Liv­er­pool Half Marathon in 1hr 31, fol­lowed a month or so later by the Lon­don Marathon in 3hrs 27.  That sum­mer I dab­bled in triathlon, com­plet­ing the Lon­don Triathlon (2hrs55).  I had done no train­ing for any of these events.  Why?  I let the good times get in the way of training.

Dur­ing the win­ter of 2005 I did a ski sea­son at the Royal Artillery train­ing camp in Alpes d’Huez.  I com­peted in the Royal Artillery Alpine Cham­pi­onships, going on to the Divi­sional Champs in Serre Cheva­lier.  I par­tic­u­larly enjoyed Super G.

I cap­tained the Reg­i­men­tal Cross Coun­try Team, and dis­cov­ered I was quite fast — but not fast enough to com­pete at a high level.  Then, I spent a year in Iraq, and didn’t com­pete at all.

By the time I left the Army in the sum­mer of 2008, I was putting on weight and needed to find focus in order not to loose that resid­ual fit­ness that I had built up.  I decided to enter the Lon­don to Brighton Ultra Marathon.