There’s not been much to report since injuring myself at the Monarchs Way Ultra at the end of May and being out of action for a few weeks whilst I recovered. Unfortunately, my body seemed to fall to pieces as the knee injury also seemed to trigger a hip injury, groin injury and I also managed put my back out during this period. A stop start return to running (i.e. trying to run before you were fully recovered a couple of times) didn’t help either!

It wast a serious injury but nevertheless was a frustrating few weeks and the first time in quite a while that I’ve actually been prevented from running. Thankfully, Wales’s recent run in the Euro Championships has been a welcome distraction.

Thankfully everything seemed to be clearing up in the last week or two and I decided to have a little run out at the recent Saturday Night Marathon event (my own).

Thanks to a friend of mine Matt Brown who kindly offered to be Race Director for the night which allowed me to both help and have a run out in the Half Marathon event. The event is designed to be a low-key, sociable and friendly run along the Thames Path on a Saturday Night with Marathon and Half Marathon (see how I came up with the name?) options.

We were pretty fortunate (once again) with the weather with earlier downpours in the day replaced with warm sunshine as the Marathon runners set off at 5pm and it was great to see a few familiar faces, local runners and club runners take part.

At 8pm the Half Marathon runners set off and I settled into a comfortable pace chatting to a few runners on the way as we completed our 2 ½ laps of the course. I did have a slight concern over peoples perception about running in your own event but since I’m not fully fit and recovering from injury then I wasn’t going to be very competitive and had planned to run at a steady pace.

Thankfully the knees and legs held up although after finishing I jogged along the course to do a bit of course sweeping and tidying up and my legs ached quite a bit so a sensible decision to just run the Half!

Thanks to all the people who helped out on the night. Despite the event being quite small, feedback has always been quite positive with a good location, sound organisation and a sociable and friendly atmosphere.

The next (and final) Saturday Night Marathon event is scheduled for Saturday 3rd September. Despite thoroughly enjoying setting up and running a few events of the past couple of years, it is a lot of effort to organise and I feel as if I have ticked the ‘Race Directors’ box so it’s not my intention to continue these next year which gives me a bit of time to perhaps do something else. Maybe it’s time to start writing my memoirs of grass roots ultra running over the last 10 years?

In terms of other events for the remainder of the year, I am due to return to the T184 at the end of August but with this being 7 weeks away (and a family holiday planned for 2 weeks in between) then I’m not sure if I will be fit or ready for this especially as my last ultra was a DNF and my last T184 event was a DNF. (Does a negative and a negative make a positive here?) I will reserve judgement on this one and see how the running goes over the next few weeks.

After that its the Autumn 100 in October which was a planned ‘fun run’ and I should hopefully be fully fit by then.