It was a better year than some. I was derailed by injury in September, sustaining bruised ribs in a fall. I was not running at the time, but walking innocently around London.  I entered few races and completed fewer, having to forego place in the Lewes Downland and the Hellingly 10k, because of the ribs.…

I haven’t used this blog in anger for a very long time but the time seems ripe to revive it. Twitter – I refuse to call it X- is no longer useful. The advertisements are annoying and laughable, and the search function simply doesn’t work properly any more. Unlike some, I can’t say that I…

2023 is over, as far as running is concerned, my last run being Seaford Beach parkrun this morning. Much to my astonishment the year shows some improvement. I recorded my highest total running distance since 2018, 545 miles, and that without running anything longer than a 10k-and-a-bit. I’m not sure what to attribute this to,…

It’s a little late to review last year. I’m already got four 2023 runs under my belt. Nevertheless, this is what it looks like. Only one year, 2013 recorded a were total mileage (406 against 2022’s 436).  Injury accounts for some of this: I some falls, some while running, some at home, and found getting…

  I write this later than I should, but by Sunday just gone I had five weeks left to go, and had done another run that covered a distance greater than I had run at any time since June of last year. It was surprisingly easy, in spite of cold grey weather and a bit…

  The highlight of the week was a return to Lewes’s fabled Twitten run, which approaches its sixth anniversary. I last tackled it on 11th July 2021. By chance, as I ran it with Rob, Nick and Bec, we happened upon its founder and only begetter, Duncan, on his way to Blackcap. Other runs comprised…

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There’s something special about the first late afternoon run after the clocks go back. I went out into fierce winds blowing foam over the Seaford Head golf course, and down to the seafront. It reminds me of the winter Sunday afternoons of childhood, in the back of my father’s Austin Cambridge, driving homewards from Ely…

Shane and me at the launch of the North Thames Regional Documents Database Shane Godbolt died on 24th November 2019. I am not qualified to write a full obituary, but these are some memories. I first met her in the 1990s, but her fame preceded her: Information Sources in the Medical Sciences, whose 3rd and…

I went on to look at annual totals from 2005 onwards, to put this year in perspective. In particular, I found that 2019 was not the lowest distance I’ve ever managed: both 2013 and 2014 were worse. This is heartening.  

The year started well: I fell from a wall while giving the Seaford Striders a pre-run briefing for their New Year’s Day run, breaking my arm. Before After                         Then at Easter I fell during the Seaford beach parkrun, while discussing the Forest Red-tailed…

Week 7 concluded this week, with a run in Lewes, through the Priory as members of Southover Bonfire Society prepared their fire site, then up Juggs Road. It was a beautiful sunny day after yesterday’s storms. When I’m doing greater distances I might follow this route to Kingston and up onto the hills above.  Week…

What, pray, I hear you ask, is a Twiathlon? It is an annual event comprising two athletic disciplines, Twitten running and outdoor pool swimming. The first requires, as I may have explained before, runners to meet at 9 am on a Sunday outside the All Saints Centre in Lewes, whence they go to run twelve…

We are into the fifth month of the year, and I have just completed my first races of 2019, the Mid-Sussex Marathon Weekend. Made up of three races at the May Day Bank Holiday weekend, the East Grinstead Ten Mile, the Haywards Heath Ten Mile and the Burgess Hill 10k on Saturday, Sunday and Monday…

A group of librarians from NICE, Public Health England, universities and NHS Library and Knowledge services were privileged to attend a workshop on Text Mining and Machine Learning in Systematic Reviews, led by James Thomas, Professor of Social Research and Policy at the EPPI-Centre. James designed EPPI-Reviewer software to manage all types of literature review,…

I was pleased with myself; I had a plan to get the much-needed long runs in. On Brighton Marathon weekend, I was to go to the Marathon Medical Conference this afternoon, helping with some of the administration, exhibiting on behalf of Brighton and Sussex NHS Library and Knowledge Service – I provide information support to…

‘All this is marshalling is all very well, but what about the running?’ That is the question on the lips of every reader of this blog. And I must say that things have not gone entirely to plan. On New Year’s Day, hubristically, I climbed on a wall to address the crowds at the Seaford…

The Moyleman is a marathon covering the downs around Lewes, which we organise in memory of Chris Moyle, whose running nom de guerre was the Moyleman. When I arrived at Moyleman headquarters on the morning of St Patrick’s Day, Ash, our founding Race Director, greeted me with a mischievous smile and a tray of shot…

Download Moyleman route (GPX file)

Looking back on 2018, I feel a certain smugness. My aim was to do a long, that is half-marathon distance, or further, race in each quarter, and that I achieved. On the other hand I am slow, much slower these days, and I worry that improvement is perhaps beyond me, as I approach my 64th…