Running Achievements

Sophie

Well this won’t take long 🙂 In short I am a much more accomplished coach than I am an athlete but my running achievements have allowed me to coach from a technical and experiential perspective as opposed to just being able to read all the right manuals.

I am not an exceptional athlete trying to tell you how I did it.  I am someone who has grown from an mediocre club level junior, to a reasonable standard club masters athlete over cross country, trails, road and ultras.  I have competed over every distance from 800m to ultras and duathlons and love the structure of a 10k as much as I thrive on the uniqueness of off road or bespoke distance or multi-day events. 

My biggest achievement was as a member in the winning National Cross Country team as an Under 11 (honest they used to race U11 juniors at Nationals back in the old days). My worst race was a marathon but boy did I learn how not to do it which I will gladly share with anyone taking on this event for the first time.  I have coached an athlete to a 2.25.00 marathon which proves that you don’t always have to be able to do it yourself to coach it.

I returned to training to compete in 2017 following a wonderful 24/7 commitment to two of my athletes over a number of years and am now chasing what I like to affectionately call OAP Pb’s.  Being a Master50 athlete has its advantages including a lovely pottery mug and a District 10K medal. I have also completed a number of trail and mountain ultras, again placing due to racing in the Masters age groups 🙂 

I say all of this to emphasis my mantra to running, ‘Believe in the Process’.  As a coach and athlete, I am in a wonderful position of living by my beliefs and testing out theoretical hypothesis in real time.  I can draw parallels between coaching theories and application and have a real insight into the highs and lows of endurance running.  I am on the same journey as my athletes in fine tuning the process to get the best performances.

To see my running journey, check out my Power of Ten profile

Mike

I started running at junior school but never really got into training until I was 17.  I was fortunate enough that I had guidance from a coach at the local running club and with their assistance I represented England in 3 Mountain Running Championships and a cross country European race.

I went on to become the British and England Fell running champion in 1998.  I also represented the England Mountain running team in 2000 at the International Snowdon Race.

I fell out of love with running in the year 2000 and didn’t return to training until 2016, mainly to lose weight and get fit and that’s when the running bug struck again.  I didn’t have any guidance at that time and was continuously getting injured and ill and I felt as though I was not achieving my full potential.

That change in (2017) when I started to work with a couple of coaches that worked on my (fitness), With their advice, help and guidance I started to see vast improvements, which culminated in representing England at the International Snowdon Race, where I finished 5^th Overall (Part of the World Grand Prix Series) and the first English finisher.

However, I knew that to progress and achieve my goals I would need to work with someone who could provide me with the coaching input with a structured and individualised training programme and training methods to allow me to get the returns for my training commitment.  This is when I approached Sophie and we continue to work on getting the best results over various endurance disciplines. 

To see my running journey, check out my Power of Ten profile

Andy

I can just about remember the first time my Dad took me to my local athletics club, Caithness AAC; I must have been around 11 years old. Distance running wasn’t something that immediately grabbed my interest, I just wanted to try everything, even if my abilities at various different events were (to be generous here) somewhat modest… I loved being part of a club, the social interaction, but also that it was a sport that I could be in control of the outcome. Onto University and I began to appreciate that distance running was likely my calling and although still very much enjoying the outside-of-training social aspects, I had a desire to improve and what I considered at the time, a pipe-dream of representing Scotland.

A few years later, and not long after I started being coached by Sophie (2009), I was selected for my first Scottish international vest in the perhaps not-so-glamorous Dunfermline Half Marathon which was part of a Home Countries Road Running International series at the time. Following that was several years of mostly cross country and road racing with a step up to the marathon; during that time winning a number of Scottish international vests and national medals in those disciplines. There were difficult periods where preparations for the marathon didn’t go to plan, and I found myself in 2014 at a bit of a crossroads in terms of where I wanted my running career to take me next. I discovered then I was more at home in the hills and mountains and from there grew a passion for mountain and trail running.

Sophie and I worked together to adapt my training and over the course of the next decade I represented Great Britain at 7 x European Mountain Running Championships and 8 x World Championships, along with winning 6 x British Mountain Running Titles and 2 x World Mountain Running World Cup Series. Additionally in the past few years I have began to delve into the ultra running scene and have completed the Icelandic 55km Laugavegur Trail Race (winning in 2021, runner-up in 2022) and Scafell Pike Trail Marathon (runner-up 2021, 4th in 2022).

To see my running journey, check out my Power of Ten profile