Last weekend I entered a 5 mile cross-country race with several other Momentum Sports athletes.  Unfortunately, this is 20 times as far as I normal race - so 5% into it I was starting to hope for the finish line!

Only by setting off VERY steadily, did I manage to make it round what was a pretty hilly course in a vaguely respectable 36.45mins.  It was a little disconcerting that I was beaten by 3 minutes by a guy in his mid-60s, but he is a quality runner.  I was an even more distant 8 minutes behind the winner of the race!

Despite feeling like it would never end and hoping a big hole would swallow me up for much of the race (or at least someone would chuck a nice big bucket of water over me as it was a very warm day), in retrospect it was pretty good fun.  I had a good tussle with 4 others - beating two in the end and losing out to the other two.

As this is a once yearly thing for me - I am now fully fuelled up with banter for a while and will definitely be back in 12 months time (in which time I'll have run lots of my preferred 400m distance!).

Remember, for all your running banter try our new social website Momentum Sports Live.

Keep on running...

Momentum Sports is pleased to announce that we have created the social network to end all social networks - all for runners.

That may not strictly be true - but it is a great new tool for keeping in touch with all your running friends, having a bit of banter about achievements, discuss training or the latest kit or even just to show pictures of your running (or anything else.

Have a play with it and see what you think - we are still developing it, so are open to suggestions as to improvements that we can make.

The site is at Momentum Sports Live 

Enjoy!!

In the past athletics was a very easy sport - it was amateur, the people who took part were doing so for fun and at times training was even frowned upon as seeking an unfair advantage over your opponents.

That all changed, gradually, through the 20th Century and now in the 21st century, if you want to achieve in your sport it is no longer enough just to go for the odd run, turn up on the starting line and do you best.

You need to make sure that your running training is right, you eat and drinking properly, you get stronger in the gym, you prepare mentally and you have the right support in terms of medical back up and advice.

To this end, here at Momentum Sports we have put together a project from the elite athletes in training with us.  In return for the athletes dedication, talent and enthausiasm we will do what we can to provide extra resources to aid their training in addition to the normal high level of coaching we normally try to achieve.  This includes video analysis of technique, nutritional help, psychological approach to athletics and many other things.  We also hope to help with the costs of participation in the sport, which often runs to £1500 - 2000 for a national level athlete.

We are looking for sponsors to help us with this project.  Sponsorships isn't purely a one way deal - in return we will discuss ways in which we can promote your business, including advertising on our website, which is one of the biggest running websites around, receiving over 40,000 visitors a quarter and 200,000 page impressions.

If this is something that would interest you, please get in touch at coaches@momentumsports.co.uk

Also, if you are an athlete, and this seems like something that might possibly interest you and you'd like to join our group in London, please let us know.

Sorry about the lack of postings recently - but I've been on my holidays.

I won't bore you too much with the mundanities of it - but suffice to say my 4 year old daughter has now had a first 5 nights under canvas and was surprisingly well behaved!

Before I went, I would have posted more on the site - but frankly I couldn't drag myself away from watching the Olympics on the TV for long enough to use the keyboard.  It was BRILLIANT - I love being self-employed, even though I hardly earn enough money to live off!!!!

So superlative is there that can't be used about the Olympics.  It was fantastically well organised, the atmosphere seems to have been great and even those who normally aren't that interested in sport, let along athletics have been talking about the greatest sprint feats of all time from Usain Bolt.

We'd better start with that, I guess, how does someone that tall generate that much power, it is truly amazing.  Like Michael Johnson before, here is a man who stands head and shoulders (in Usain's case literally as well as figuritely) over their opposition making them stand out amongst the 6 billion people on the planet as being hugely better than the best of the other 5,999,999,999 people!!!

Sub 9.7 and he was easing down - and then backed up with a 19.3.....

That will live in Olympic history, up with Jesse Owens, Paavo Nurmi and Carl Lewis.  If it wasn't for a certain Michael Phelps he'd be a shoe-in for top sportsperson of the year - even though I believe he has put Phelps' unbelievable talent slightly in the shade, as the 100m is the blue-riband event of any Olympics.

Next, the double from Kenenisa Bekele was an amazing feat, the first time the 5000 and 10000 has been won by the same athlete since 1980 - both in very fast times, and yet off that great sprint finishes.

On the womens side, I love the way Christine Ohuroughu runs - she is so fantastically strong.  Personally, I'd prefer to see her doing more 400m races in the course of the season, but who can argue with the result.  It would be good to see what she can do for an 800 - a totally different race, I know and she wouldn't probably have the strength for rounds at a Championship - but in a one off race I would think a sub 2 minute run would be almost a certainty.

It was a shame Phillips Idowu didn't win the gold he so badly wanted - but he did his best jump of the year and was just beaten by the better man on the day.

I could go on for hours, but for now I'll say thanks to all the athletes, the officials, the Chinese and ultimately the sporting world for a great feast of entertainment.