The Mark Ellis Blog

Now the last few months have been pretty busy and I've not had much time to get any blogging in. So, with a week off, its about time that I caught up on last years Athletics Review blog and have a read.  It was good to look back on what happened in 2014 and to see what I was looking forward to in 2015. It has been a hectic year and a very productive one at that.  We'll start with the most senior child and it's been great to see Dominic back competing again.  He mixed his summer of athletics with his GCSE exams and was wise to concentrate on the exams first and let the athletics follow.  He's had a dabble at all sorts this year in both track and field, with him taking part in the Youth Development League and competing for the seniors at Houghton Harriers.  He's done the Hammer, Discus, Shot Putt and Javelin as well as doing relays, XCountry and any distance on the track.  His highlight of the year was his 2nd place in the NE Grand Prix in the U17M category...

Here we are just two days into the World Athletics Championships and its already been an enthralling, exilerating and sometimes painful watch. Yesterday was great and thanks to the delight of modern technology, I watched the last 5 mins of Mo's race on a mobile phone sat in the middle of a car park in rural Northumberland. The bloke sat eating his dinner in a caravan parked close by must have thought I was bonkers sat shouting at the phone. But Mo triumphed after a bumpy season and a very bumpy 10k race too. The action in the Heptathlon was also superb and Dominic had been up at foolish o'clock to watch the early action and it was great to watch the highlights later to see Jess & KJT at the top of the tree. Now, I'm proud to say that after 44 years, I've never ever got up in the wee small hours to watch a sporting event. We've had England football matches at daft times in World Cups but I've never watched them. I've occasionally stopped up late to wa...

A bit belated I know, but eventually I've got around to blogging about Blaydon. As people who know me will know, me and Blaydon have never got on - I've done the race 3 times before, but never enjoyed it. 2010 was my first go and I hadn't trained anywhere near enough and I hadn't appreciated how much of a try hard race it was. 2012 was the year that it chucked it doon and Scotswood Road was under watter, which is nee good for gadgees like me with glasses on. 2014 was a bit traumatic too as it had been me Nanna's funeral in the afternoon, so wasn't in the best frame of mind. Having said that, each year had seen progress time wise from an awful 82 mins (& 3rd last in 2010) to 64 mins in 2014. This year was a little different though as Wor Bri was also doing Blaydon - now if yer divvent knaa BRI, he's our #gancanny coach and still running into his early 80's. It's fair to say that he's part of my running inspiration, as well as being our c...

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...