The Mark Ellis Blog

I thought I'd finish the year off with a blog on how this year has gone with my athletics head on and to look forward a bit to 2015. From my own perspective, its not been a great year for my own athletics performance as injury seems to have caused me a few spots of bother that have hindered progress. My aim for 2014 was to bring my long distance times down & I'd set myself targets of sub 28 mins for Parkrun, sub 60 mins for 10km & sub 2:20 for the Great North Run. Sadly, none of the targets have been achieved and the closest I've got was to equal my Parkrun pb of 29:48 and that was back in March. The targets remain and so will the focus to tick them off in 2015 instead - the aim is to be a bit leaner and meaner as well as fitter next year. Then it comes to the rest of the family. Philippa's performance has come on leaps and bounds this year and her move to Houghton Harriers has been a great success. She's had a really great year and has had lots of ...

It's been a while since I did a blog and the last one was a bit of an athletics moan. So here we go again, but its more of making a point rather than having a moan. A few weeks ago one of the committee members at Chester-le-Street Athletics Club collared me and asked what the difference was between Houghton Harriers and Chester-le-Street. I was reasonably diplomatic and explained that Houghton was a very welcoming atmosphere with much more of a team spirit, much better communication and no signs of a clique. There's nothing really complicated about what happens at Houghton - its just being approachable, getting the kids together at the start of the session and doing Parish Notices on who's run & how they've done, plus you hand a flyer out for upcoming events and remind people as the dates get closer. Tricky it ain't. The difference in the approaches of the 2 clubs couldn't have been clearer following the Park View School trip to the ESAA Cross Country ...

Now a mate of mine had mentioned before about his day's out on the NorthernRail network for a tenner, so when I noticed that the offer was going to be in the Sunderland Echo, I thought I'll give this a go.  Being a tight wad, I got the tokens from the Echo's that we get at work and I registered on the Northern Rail website and got a form to download to get the tickets.  The form said to take it & two tokens to any staffed station on the Northern Rail network - sounds simple eh.... So, off I go to Newcastle to buy my tickets - after all, its a staffed station and its on the Northern Rail network, but lo, I can't buy my tickets at this specific staffed station on the Northern Rail network as the ticket office is staffed by East Coast.  The East Coast staff told me that I could only buy the tickets at either Hexham or Sunderland stations.  A touch miffed, the following day I head to Sunderland and eventually get my tickets and the lady on the desk was extremely h...

I blogged back in February about the poor state of Newcastle United, so on the eve of another dismal looking home fixture against Hull City, it's time to take stock of where we are now. The summer seemed quite a positive time.  For once, we did what I'd wanted us to do for a long time and sign our players in good time to let them have a good pre-season.  We signed what I thought where some good players and for once, I was quite looking forward to the start of the season.  Now that was unusual as over the past couple of seasons I'd just not had any confidence that we would do anything.  I wasn't stupid enough to expect that we'd be heading for Champions League places or anything that daft ahead of this season, but I did thing that we had the fixtures and the team to have a really good start. Sadly though, I couldn't have been more wrong as I'd neglected to remember that we still had Alan Pardew as a Manager.  From having read my blog back from February ag...

I've done a few different 10k's around the North East and a few other races in other places too, but there's fewer better races to take part in than the Tees Pride 10k.  Today was my 2nd running in the race, having pondered doing it for a few years and always being persuaded by the Management (aka the Mrs) that it was too close to the Great North Run. But last year I ignored her and I was glad that I did - I had a brilliant run and got my 10k pb at 63 mins dead.  It was the ideal warm up race ahead of the Great North Run as its usually just a week before the big one. There's no doubt that Middlesbrough puts on a good show -  the organisation of the race is spot on, easy entry on line, pack sent out in good time, all the info you need on where to park etc in a useful book and all at a great value price in comparison to others.  On the day is great too as its easy to find where you need to be and at what time plus there's plenty of facilities for when you need the...

After my experience yesterday with one of the coaches at Chester-le-Street Athletics Club, I thought I'd blog about my experiences as a parent, sort of athlete and recently qualified coaching assistant. We've had an involvement with the club for a number of years as Dominic has trained there since he packed in football just over 4 years ago.  When he first joined he was getting info on competitions and competing, but he wasn't great and soon the mentions of competitions stopped.  However, it didn't put him off and he kept going, with a number of different coaches, some of whom didn't turn up regularly and he seemed to be passed from pillar to post until he settled in Brian's group. Once she reached the right age, Philippa also joined and she did really well in her first few events at Quadkids at Gateshead.  She really enjoyed it and progressed even further in the second year at Quadkids, where she came 2nd.  Unfortunately though, she seemed to be overlooked ...

Dismal is possibly the best way that you can describe it - yes, we're talking about the Derby result on a Saturday. But, does the defeat really mean much to the powers that be at St James Park ?  I suspect we all know the answers to that particular question.  For Newcastle, it was another self inflicted kick in the nuts - a heady combination of selling your best player in the days before the window shut, your loanee talisman forward getting sent off in the fixture before, every other striker being injured and then there's the abject lack of movement in the transfer market.  Despite having copious notice that Cabaye would be going at some point, it seems that no effort has been made to try and target or line up someone to replace him.  It's pretty basic stuff, but clearly too basic for NUFC. Was it a shock - not at all. Sunderland have had a resurgence in results in the past few weeks, but having said that, I watched them on New Years Day against Villa and they ...

As we approach some tragic scenes with Hayley's death on Coronation Street, I thought I'd have my two-penneth on the touchy subject of euthanasia/assisted suicide.  Now I know it's a bit deep and meaningful for me, but it does have some resinance and it is something that I feel quite strongly about. Between disease and old age, there's a multitude of reasons that can reduce people's quality of life and its how we deal with people once their health deteriorates that concerns me.  The Corrie story is horrific and it does show just how quickly diseases like cancer can strike and bring down someones quality of life.  In fairness to the soap's, they tend to handle these situations very well and get some excellent advice, with Macmillan Cancer Support working with Corrie on the story. All this helps to raise awareness of people's tragic situations with debillating disease and gets people talking.  Talking and then taking notice is something that our politician...

Social Media is still a great way for businesses to communicate with their customers.  I did blog some time ago about how frustrating it can be if the businesses don't communicate with you and its time to name and shame a few more as they aren't talking back or aren't thinking about what they write. One of the most frustrating recent web experience was with Primark - the Mrs wanted to have a look at their store in Sunderland when we where there for the match on New Years Day. So, I checked their website to make sure they were open and I was surprised that the website said the store was open from 9am until 5.30pm, with them even having a countdown timer as to how long they'd be open for. Champion we thought, until we got to Sunderland to find the store closed, all the other shops closed and it chucking down with rain.  Not a happy teddy and Cafe Nero scored for our discretionary spend.  I had a moan about Primark and hashtagged them and didn't get a response. I the...