With just a few weeks to go until the Ipswich Half Marathon, we have eight colleagues who are participating in this year’s race! Over the next few blogs we will meet some of our runners taking on the challenge and follow their journeys — from training, to race day, and finally reflecting on their achievements afterwards.
Here’s a little introduction to our first four runners: Owen, Dafydd, Wayne and Mark as they prepare for the big day.
Owen
Owen is a 20 year old student and works as a Duty Supervisor at Ipswich Fit. Always active, Owen played football competitively until the age of 18 and since then found a passion in HYROX. Having competed in three competitions already this year his hard work of training is paying off where he achieved recent success at Warsaw with a PB and placing an impressive 6th in his age group.
“ I am passionate about finding the right balance between work, social life, and training, always striving to integrate each of these important aspects of my life.”
Owen has been focusing on his running since June last year and back in March competed in his first Half Marathon and is now challenging himself with an ambitious goal to break an incredible 90 minutes!
Dafydd
Dafydd is 40 and works as a Housing Options Officer at Ipswich Borough Council preventing and relieving homelessness. Away from work, life is busy with his partner raising their two children. Hobbies outside of work include running, football, drawing and cinema trips.
“Me and my partner have two children aged 4 and 7 who keep us on our toes and is the equivalent to running a half.”
This will be Dafydd’s impressive fourth Half Marathon, having competed in Ipswich last year and Colchester twice! Running hasn’t always been a passion though — in fact, he admits he once found it boring and hated it but since being a part of Harmonious Running Society things have changed and is now hoping to achieve an ambitious but realistic goal of 2 hours. We asked Dafydd what made him want to the Ipswich Half Marathon?
“A sense of achievement – I would like to achieve a personal best, however this falls down to how well I do with my training.”
Wayne
Wayne is 55 and works part time in the Counter Fraud department at IBC. With a busy family life with his four children, Wayne enjoys seeing bands and attending the odd motor racing event and lives an active lifestyle as a regular gym goer.
“I’ll either be in a HIIT class, spin class or on the treadmill with a bit of weight training.”
Wayne hasn’t always been a lover of running though but as the kids got older he re-found his passion for the gym and as he got fitter running then started to become part of weekly life.
Having taken on the Ipswich Half Marathon last year, Wayne has decided to see if he can better his time. The goal a very respectful and impressive 2 hours! Although with a few recent short holidays has meant a few missed sessions but nothing Wayne feels that can’t be turned around.
Mark
Mark is a Construction Project Manager for IPSERV and is a keen runner having picked up the sport about four years ago where he started with Couch to 5k. Mark’s love for running has grown over the years after competing in Ipswich Half Marathon two years ago. From then he was hooked having really enjoyed the subsequent training and has since competed in Chelmsford Marathon and hopes to progress all the way to an Ultra!
Training is going slower than usual unfortunately for Mark due to an ITB injury he picked up in January which forced him to stop for a period. Mark is now coming back and is aiming for a new PB but just completing the race this year without any injury is the main goal.
“Since the first time I completed the Ipswich HM I decided I would do it every year, until I can’t!”
Stay Tuned…
As we unveil our next three colleagues/athletes in training we will be checking back in with them all again ahead of the big day to see how training is going and how they are feeling leading up to the race.