Personal Bests

There's a rather large article about me in today's Yorkshire Evening Post.  Read it here (with the photo) or here (without the photo).

Also, just found this on Greg Crowther's blog.  I hope he doesn't mind me reproducing it here if I put a link to his blog afterwards.  I'd like to ask his permission but I can't find any contact details on his blog.  One thing though ... being American he talks about Personal Records rather than Personal Bests, good stuff though.

The five stages of PRs

1. You set PRs because, by definition, your first race at each distance is a personal record.

2. You frequently set PRs by large amounts because you're still growing and maturing, and/or because you started training relatively recently, and/or because you're in the middle of a successful weight-loss program, and/or because you're now training much more sensibly than ever before.

3. You set PRs less frequently and by smaller amounts, and you find these modest improvements disappointing because you've become accustomed to stage #2.

4. As PRs continue to become more elusive, you learn to savor each new one.

5. You are now too old, too injured, and/or too unfit to set PRs.  To compensate, you either invent new categories of achievement (such as "seasonal bests" and "age-group PRs"), try events that you've never done before (and thus return to stage #1), or stop racing altogether.

I guess I'm in stage 1 (for the second time) ... what about you ?

Originally posted on Greg Crowther's blog, 11 November 2008