Ian McAllister

Mid-life crisis or lightbulb moment?

I’ve never been particularly sporty. I dipped my toe into running BC (before children) but the man who ran the club told me off for going too slow once and I never went back. Poor fella was just doing his job at trying to motivate me, but clearly hadn’t chosen his audience too well. Bear a grudge? Me? Never……

In 2014 my mate Stacey did the Great North Run and we met him at the finish line. And I got jealous. Jealous of the atmosphere, his new finishing T-Shirt and the fact that he was then entitled to be smug all day about it. So I entered. And got in. And did it. And didn’t collapse.

So I thought “in for a penny, in for a pound” and got a little bit obsessed with entering things.

It turns out that – a little over a year since first getting myself a decent enough set of sneakers, I’ll be doing a 62.5 mile ultra marathon along the St Cuthberts Way. Wow.

60% of my running is in my head – if I think I’m not going to do it, I’ll not. So to motivate me to train for this, I’m trying to enter as many different events as I can – hopefully one a month – to keep me going. I’m also getting my mates to take me out on their training runs so I get a feel for what they do too.

I thought that I would turn this into good and raise funds for the Newcastle Healthcare Charity (child bereavement) and hope that I will do them proud! My justgiving page is http://www.justgiving.com/All4Guy if you feel inclined. I also have sponsorship forms if you want to go traditional – I’ve even got someone sponsoring me £1 per St Cuthberts Way mile!

Thank you for taking the time to visit my website – I’ll aim to keep you as updated as I can throughout the process!