Newbie Olivia has been impressing the team with stories of her personal fitness journey. Her positive can-do attitude has persuaded the team into joining her, by signing up for the Great Manchester Run 2023!
I signed up for the Manchester Marathon in November 2021 as I enjoy the freedom running brings and wanted to make the most of my passion whilst pushing my ability and of course to raise money for a wonderful charity, Cancer Research UK.
Although I have been running for years, this was my first actual marathon, so I had to prepare myself to train for the big day, as opposed to just picking up my trainers and setting off for a run around the local park!
Leading up to the race, I gave myself 16 weeks to focus on improving my running by following a training plan I’d put together. The training plan was inspired by several articles and videos I’d watched online for beginner marathon runners, putting together what I thought would be ideal for me. During those 16 weeks, I found it difficult to stick to the plan but it has encouraged me to try this race again with better training and compare the results.
When I set this goal for myself, I didn’t focus on achieving a particular completion time as I knew I wanted to be comfortable throughout the race and finish with as little injury as possible. Because of this, I ran my first ever marathon in 5 hours 41 minutes which is certainly above the average time to complete a marathon, this has inspired me to attempt this race again in 2023, leaving me 21 weeks to combine what I learnt last time and build on this to hopefully beat my last completion time.
Since joining MPSL, some of the team and I have agreed to take part in Manchester’s Half Marathon in May 2023. This has become a huge topic in the office and certainly made me more excited about my running progress for next year as we are all utilising the running app Strava, which is definitely creating a bit of competition between us!
