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 ...