According to Strava, I did 91 runs in 2025. A decrease of 3 compared to 2024. Running a total of 459km over 57 hours. Slightly down on last year, but not massively different. I attended WERC for around 27 training sessions, not bad.

My other race highlights this year were:

• Lindsays Scottish Athletics National Cross Country – got rather schooled in a very strong field. Reckon I was one of the last over the line. But it was good fun starting in such a large pack, and competing with “proper” runners.
• 2025 Sri Chinmoy 1 mile relay – mega fun 1 mile relay in the meadows. Awesome just going max speed as part of a 3 person relay team. Had a wee picnic in the meadows afterwards.
• Men’s 10k with running club in September – still love that big finish into Murrayfield stadium. Slightly slower than last year.
• Inaugural junior parkrun at Hailes Quarry – which we’ve tried to regularly attend with the children.
• Milano Nord Parkrun – Rory’s first (adult) Parkrun! Also building out that Parkrun tourist portfolio.
• Got out for a lot more runs in the Pentlands, love living so close by.

Holidays

New Year – Wee stay in Aviemore, lots of snow, great evening run in the icy conditions.

Easter – Centerparcs with my sister and family.

May – annual “dad camp” at Blair Castle.

Summer – Italy, Lake Garda, Peschiera del Garda.

June – Camping North Berwick with friends.

October – Half-term on the ferry over to Netherlands: Duinrell. Also a lovely weekend with Ria at Monachyle Mhor.

Peace out.

Warning, stats ahead!

According to Strava, I did 94 runs in 2024. An increase of a whopping 6 compared to 2023. Running a total of 512km over 58 hours. 500km is a nice round number, I like it.

The big news for me personally was that I joined a running club in January. A brand new club started up in Saughton Park and I went along for the first night and have been there pretty consistently since. It’s lovely to be in a community of like minded folk and have the varied drills and not just plodding away at another 5k.

I must be doing something right as I set a new PB for my 5k time (26:16) back in August.

My other race highlights this year were:

• EMF 10k in May – still good fun, and must be about the 4th time I’ve done it. Planning to do again in 2025.
• Seven Hills Half Marathon in July – an Edinburgh classic, properly mad, but amazing fun.
• Men’s 10k with running club in September – great being part of the run club gang, still love that big finish into Murrayfield stadium.
• 7 Reservoirs Half Marathon in December – very ambitious with minimal training. Epically muddy and the hills are no joke. Faded a fair at the halfway point, but still proud to have completed it.

Cycling

In other personal new, I started a new job in January after departing the world of creative agencies. I’ve specialised in Consultancy, specifically as a Technical Consultant at Storm ID. Why is this in the cycling section? Well, Storm are based right down at the shore in Leith. Quite a bit further than my old West End stomping grounds. I’m generally in the office slightly less, but the cycle is about twice the distance.

This means my cycling activity count has decreased to 214 from 256 in 2024. But my total distance is almost the same – 1,366.5 km vs 1,375.3 km.

I’ve never really worked/lived in Leith, so it’s a nice change of scene. The proper cycle path all the way down Leith Walk is also bloody brilliant.

Holidays

Easter – Legoland, Billund, Denmark.

Summer – Switzerland: Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, Interlaken, Lucerne. What a blast! Probably needs it’s own blog post.

October – Madrid city break to celebrate Ria’s 40th. Child-free. Felt a bit like one of those “48 hrs in” shows.

I have a rough running schedule taped to the fridge, so my wife knows when I’m aiming to go out. By 8pm the children are all in bed, we’ve figured out what we’ll have for dinner later. All I have to do is go out for a run. Easy, right? But binging Netflix would also be easy…sitting on the sofa would also be easy…scrolling social media would be easy…So why do I run? How do I beat the mind goblin who whispers to me?

The spectre of the mind goblin sits at the fringes of my mind. I know that if I don’t do something to get those endorphins and dopamine flowing, it will start to creep in. I was never a sporty child. I did mini-rugby until I was 13, but that was my only active pursuit. I preferred books, movies and (yes, cliché time) the lure of the computer. But later in life I’d often get stuck in a rut, either personally or professionally. I’d deeply focus on a problem, until it became all encompassing. I had to have an outlet for my brain to switch off, and I found running. The benefits of exercise for wellbeing are well documented and I’ve found it needs to be part of my life to stay mentally healthy. So that’s what gets me to lace up my shoes, and get out of the door. Part of my brain craves that post-run feeling and it wants some of those magic vibes.

The first 1k are always terrible, as my joints ache, my lungs complain and part of my brain screams “this again!?”. But then it starts to subside, I start to watch the scenery, or pay attention to the podcast plugged into my ears. I start to tune out the noise of my laboured breathing, and the pounding of my feet. I start to spot the wildlife along the canal, or see a gorgeous sunset over Edinburgh’s hills. I’m into the rhythm now and I nod at fellow runners, dodge cyclists, and keep an eye out for the e-bike youths. I stop and walk a bit, but not for too long, I don’t want to stray too far from the running pace. I glance at the time, and think of the sofa back at home. I’m just about at the halfway point – almost the best point of the run when I know I’m on the return leg.
The return leg is always faster, and my senses strain to hear the beep of my watch as it hits the magical 5, 8, 10k – whatever I’m supposed to be running today. The beep of the watch finally arrives and I slow to a walk, stopping my watch.

I did it. I went out.

The endorphins flow, the “runner’s high” kicks in and I’m king of my world.

I made myself go out and run. Using only my brain to move my legs faster. If I can do that, I can do anything. It’s all a state of mind.

One of those people.

It all started back in 2016 with an invite to lunchtime “run club” at work. It got me away from my desk, around the city, and talking to colleagues I often didn’t interact with on a normal day. I found it was good fun.

My colleagues Emily and Ricky pushed me on the runs, and I found that running socially kept me going further and faster than solo runs.

Over time realised I was running 5k and then sometimes up to 7k squeezed into a lunch break. Often this was a bit of a rush to get back in time, showered, hoover up lunch and get back to a desk in time for your 14:00 meeting.

In autumn of 2016 a group of us did The Mighty Deerstalker race down in Innerleithen. It was a bit of a trial by fire, a head-torch race on some very technical terrain including wading through small rivers. But something clicked – this was bloody brilliant! The post-race pint was like nectar from the gods and the endorphin buzz and race camaraderie sealed the deal.

Fast forward to covid lockdown and running became an escape from working from home, and even more important when we were only allowed outside for our government sanctioned exercise. Looking back, what scary times they were.

Since then I did the Deerstalker again, then entered into some 5ks, 10ks, an 18k downhill dafty, one out to Cramond Island and back, and culminating 3 weeks ago in the Aviemore Half Marathon. Of course, being a technology fan, I’m tracking the heck out of all of these runs using Strava. Here is the strava embed for the Aviemore half:

It was wet. Very wet. But I beat my target of sub 2hrs 20! Great scenery around the rain and for the most part an interesting course. There was one rather dull “out and back” section around 15k which was a bit of a slog as I could see the snaking path of runners into the distance. The last 3k was tough with a fair bit of walking until I realised I was practically finished and I found some last energy. Smashed a pie and and an alcohol free beer at the end .

I’m not sure if I want to run further than 21k. The training commitment was…a lot. At least three runs a week, every week for around 3 months. Ideally with a “long run” on the Sunday – which built up to around 19k in the weeks before the run. With three children it was often tricky to fit these into weekends.

I think I prefer the interesting traily runs like Scurry to Cramond Island, Hidden Glen 5/10k, the Hop Run etc. I’m keen to hear from anyone else who’s done an interesting run that isn’t a boring road 10k. If you know of another interesting run a sensible distance from Edinburgh, please let me know.

Otherwise look out for more running related blog posts and, of course, give me a follow on Strava.

Putting aside the current global pandemic a lot has happened to me personally in the last six years:

• Sold our flat and bought a sensible house, with a garden and everything
• Had not one, but two children – both boys, now 4½ and 1
• Became a bona-fide Director at Whitespace
• Sold the company to Dentsu Aegis Network – fulfilling my cyberpunk dreams of working for a mysterious Japanese multi-national corporation
• Un-became a Director at Whitespace (but I’m still on the board)

Moving back to the present – everyone at Whitespace has been working at home now for six weeks. UK-wide, we’re on “lockdown” with schools, nurseries, libraries, cafe, bars all closed. Exercise limited to once a day, and the government advice to just generally stay at home. It’s a strange and bizarre time.

In other news, we got two lovely cats.

Grant’s stag weekend – I’ve never seen a man smash so many eggs on his head.

Cracking weekend in Alnwick – castle, archery, treehouse for dinner. Lost our DSLR camera on the way back.

Had an extremely muddy time at T In the Park.

An epic amount of planning and organising all built up to Our wedding!

Then off on our honeymoon! Berlin-Prague-Vienna-Salzburg-Munich. Photos to come later.

Visited Marrakech and proposed to my darling Ria. Thankfully, she said yes!

Looked at a lot of flats in an attempt to finally get on the property ladder.

May

Had a wee break on the West coast around Troon. Good ice cream.

Went on a mountain biking related stag, somehow survived despite my lack of fitness.

June

Found a beautiful flat and jumped through the many mortgage and solicitor hoops. RBS now own our soul.

Got hospitality tickets to T in the Park though work. Had an ace time with the boys. Shame we went on the Sunday, Monday was pretty painful.

Moved out of Gilmore Place and into our new place. Didn’t want to lose our deposit so we did an epic amount of cleaning.

August

Summer emerged in Scotland. My parents, sister and brother in-law all stayed at our new place. We took them out on the town during the festival. Great times.

September

Mike’s stag do. Fired shotguns (badly) and jumped off cliffs into a very cold river – surprisingly good fun!

October

Our holiday for the year: Venice, Florence, Sienna and Rome. That warrants a post of it’s own…

November

Grew a ‘tache for Movember. Lots of people laughed at my face.

My little sister got married!

December

Christmas in Bathgate, post-xmas in Billingham. New Year in Bathgate.

Roll on 2012…

First up here are some from a long weekend we had in Troon. We had a very wet and windy visit to the nearby wee island of Cumbrae:

In the summer we visited my parents in Teesside and popped down the coast to Runswick Bay:

When my parents visited a few months back we travelled on the train to the Summerlee Heritage Park:

Friday evening we had a very nice meal at L’Escargot Blanc, but chickened out of the £20 “surprise” menu. It really was a surprise, only the chef knew what we would get, the waitress wouldn’t give us any hints, and the whole table had to opt for it. Given the name of the establishment, there was a good chance it might be snails.

Saturday we wandered around Bristo square before picking a random matinee show to go and see – Kate Fox News. Mostly an auto-biographical show based around the major news events in her life, her slightly bizzare up-bringing and, sprinkled with some poetry. Browns on George Street for lunch, very busy, great burger! Then off to the Book Festival to browse the books and people watch the odd mix of grizzled book fanatics, families eating ice creams, gin soaked publishers and people hoarding spare chairs on the lawn. We had tickets to see Rhapsodies in Red, White and Blue at 7pm so we went home to smarten up before heading to the newly refurbished (in a frantic hurry just before the festival) Usher Hall. Great performance, I don’t think I’ve ever since something with a a full orchestra and choir before. I loved the Copland and Gershwin, but some of the Ives was quite challenging. Back home for an excellent (and promptly delivered) takeaway from Zen Kitchen.

Sunday we had a bit of a lie-in and then got a bus over the Foodies Festival in Holyrood Park. I wasn’t quite sure what the expect, they had seemingly been giving free tickets out left right and centre. I was pleasantly surprised though! It was a good size, lots of different exhibitors and we signed up for a free rum tasting class – which amazingly wasn’t a complete sales pitch. Scorching weather by this point which just brought even more people out to the festival! My only nitpick was that they needed more seats, people were sunning and drinking all over the place. We saw my parents off on their train back south and then I joined Ria and friends at Reel to Real. Which was pretty schmaltzy, camp musical goodness with some clever interactions between screen and stage.

Great weekend.