Woody Wonders

In just under a year's time I'll be running my 13th marathon.   It's been a few years since my last one and I'd already been thinking about the possibility of doing another one when the opportunity was handed to me on a plate. I was scrolling mindlessly on my phone when up popped the  'Rob Burrow Leeds Marathon' .  Many of you may already know his story through either being rugby fans or being impacted in some way by MND. I didn't need to read anything else, I was doing it and that was that.  The reason I didn't need to know anything else about it, and to give you some context, is that I lost my own sister to motor neurone disease.  The opportunity to be part of a race dedicated to raising awareness and funds for MND is going to be both epic and emotional. The bottom of my world fell out when my sister told me her diagnosis, because there is no cure; MND kills a third of people within a year and more than half within two years of diagnosis.  I lost my ...

I've spent the last two weeks fully immersed in an Olympics bubble, and despite the fact I'll be glad to sleep at a normal time again, it will leave me feeling bereft when it finally ends, which it will have by the time I post this blog. There's been some amazing performances and jaw dropping stories of what the athletes have been through on their journey to Tokyo.  The lucky few have realised a lifetime's dream and experienced a high like nothing else. Sadly, the other side of the story is those athletes who are left battered, bruised and disappointed, their Olympics dream in tatters.    It got me thinking about disappointment, we've all been there but when things go wrong in full view of the eyes of the world, that's a whole new level of disappointment to contend with.  At the Olympics you have varying degrees of disappointment, there's those athletes who are disappointed with Silver and Bronze, because in their eyes only Gold was good enough (jeez I'd...