User:JoeWren/Joe Wren (athlete)

Hello my name is Joe Wren, here I will chronologize my running career

Timeline
Note to self: remove this and remove dates on subheadings when done

Here I will document the history of me running.

The Beginnings
I have always been good at running, since a young age my father used to take me on a large amount of walks, so from a very young age I had a good level of aerobic fitness.

2008 - 2012
Even as a young kid who didn't get out much I was always good at running. A good example of this would be school sports days every year, I would win both the sprints and the distance races, I did this in Year 5 and Year 6. As I knew I was alright at running, around this time I joined Morpeth Harriers.

I attended club sessions for a couple of weeks, however, at this age I was heavily autistic and did not have a grasp on socialising, this made attending club sessions almost unenjoyable as I had to socialise, sadly I decided to stop attending sessions after a few weeks because of this.

However I continued to win pretty much every sports day and fun run that my school organised. Notable exception was a fun run in roughly 2011 where we had to do a lap of Hirst Park playing field. I can't remember who did this but someone cut a large proportion of the course and finished ahead of me due to this.

2013 - 2014
In 2013 I began attending Ashington High School, I was known as speedy in PE lessons as I would always win all races, for example we would often do a lap of peoples park and I would always win this.

In 2014 I participated in school sports day, This was against people who were not in my PE group so did not know my abilities, I remember looking them in the eye and saying that I will easily win the 800m race we were about to do. They laughed as if I was joking, I proceeded to win this race by a massive margin, including lapping many of the participants.

Also in 2014 I went to watch my sister run the Great North 10K, I realised how much I wanted to run it. I said I would run it the next year, I proceeded to then run a few runs in the few months after this but ultimately never continued with this.

February - May
Knowing I would be doing the Great North 10K I knew I needed to run more, my sister prompted this by inviting me to partake in the parkrun at Druridge Bay Country Park. I finished this in 21:03 which was quite an impressive first 5k.

I then continued with this, doing a parkrun a week, slowly bringing my time down. After one week I was approached by Rob Hall from Blyth Running Club asking if I wanted to join. I said yes.

I was very immature with running in the sense that I had no idea about how to get better at running, I realised that I should probably start to run when I wasn't doing the parkrun. So along with going to Blyth training I began to run on other days, unfortunately, I had read about the "10% rule", however I thought this was referring to runs day on day not week on week. So one week, in which I was particularly motivated, I upped my mileage from ~25km to 45km the next week, as could be expected, this caused shin splints. I ran through these and managed to get my 5k time down to 19:17, the day after this I ran the Children's Cancer Fun Run just north of Newcastle Racecourse. This aggravated my shin splints to the point where I had to have time off.

May - November
After my shin splints injury I mostly stopped running apart from some parkrun's. However as expected these times began to fall more and more. I did run the Great North 10K in July however I, expectedly, did not do well. I finished in a time of 44:28 which was actually slower than a 10k training run I had done after a Parkrun a few months before.

In the following months I just ran sporadic parkrun's, the last of which came in November, finishing with a time of 21:29, slower than my first parkrun.

February
I noticed that my birthday, which is the 27th of February, would be a Saturday, I thought it would be fun to run a parkrun that day. I went for a few runs in the week or two beforehand, I finished this 5k with a time of 22:56, this time is notable as presumably, until I am very old, this will be my slowest 5k time where I am actually trying to run fast for a very very long time.

April - May
I, once again attempted to come back to running, this time spurred by a bout of depression. Again, the same story, a couple of runs and bike rides later I gave up. However I did run a training 5k in 20:40 which was 2 minutes faster than my parkrun a few months previous.

July
Attempted to come back once again, however this time was caused by a positive mood due to getting my first boyfriend, highlight of this included a few reps of Bothal bank with a warm up and cool down on the way there and back, I just remember the way back hurting a lot. This comeback attempt however failed.

October - December
As this section is still in the "dark ages" you can assume this ends the same way. However I attempted a different way of coming back, this time I went to Blyth Running Club every Monday.

I did this for 6 weeks in a 7 week period, the one thing I wish I did here was begin to run more outside of training, I believe this is when I believe my true running beginnings could've started, and not a year later like they did.

January - June
2017 started similarly to how 2016 ended, only attending club sessions, during this period I went through my first breakup, this caused me to begin try to run outside of club sessions. I tried this twice, once in March and another in May/June, again, these didn't amount to anything however we were beginning to get somewhere.

July - August
I began to run again in July after a small break, ran a few times before going on holiday to Scotland in August. During this holiday I found out that a parkrun was being started in Newbiggin-by-the-Sea in October, this was finally the motivation I had to start to train when I got back.

In August I also went down to Cambridge for a summer school, at this I bought a map of my local area, I spotted a farm called "Bushygap". I wanted to be able to ride there and back (~40 miles), I, again had more motivation to get fit.