What got me into it was our Olympics in London.

So, 2012, I'm one of the legacy stories of the Olympics, I feel. I was watching that super Saturday with Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis, and Greg Rutherford, more Mo Farah because he's relatable to me.

I was watching it at my friend's house, and we were just shouting, but we weren't into running at all. I watched the Olympics, but I didn't have a passion for it. I've always been a sportsperson playing football in the UK, but the Olympics unlocked everything; they unlocked the desire to want to do something else outside of football. 

That led me to discovering Parkrun, and again, this was by chance. I was reading my local newspaper with my parents, and I saw on the back of the paper it said Parkrun. I was like, What the hell could this be? So I grabbed this and I said, Look, we need to go and check this out; it's free; you get a $5,000 timed run; they list your time; and we don't know, let's just go. That started a journey, another part of discovery where I took Parkrun seriously. 

I run everything from 5K to ultramarathons. So my recent race performance was a marathon where I ran 2.39. I was going for an England vest; I wanted to represent England in the coming years. I missed out on it, but now entering this sub 2.40, I've entered a new landscape of performance, which I'm going to take forward to definitely go and get the time down to low 2.30s.

I didn't go from 5k to ultra overnight; the journey to that was a journey of patience or giving yourself time, a journey of discovery. It was like a hero's journey, right? Because I went from probably 10K to a marathon within three months, but I learnt you shouldn't do that. Very much in the early days. That kind of running community, that camaraderie that I felt in the early days of running really spoke to me. And that's why I stayed in the sport. 

I went from LA to Las Vegas and came out with a stress fracture and had to change the whole way I approached the sport. I did a coaching qualification; I've taken the sport more seriously, and I've kind of passed on that knowledge to other people.

So when I joined the Adidas Runners community, within four months, I was given a bib to run the Berlin Marathon in 2016. It was more of a reward and recognition thing for the brand work I was doing, but I didn't understand the concept of training and how to approach yourself, periodizing, biomechanics, and I got injured like a month into the training. 

I pay quite a lot of attention to my feet, actually, because I learnt about aspects of movement, of running biomechanics, of tendons, of fascia, and of bones. So in terms of foot care, my main thing is strength. Strength in the ankle, strength in the bones, strength in the lower limbs, in the lower extremities, especially coming from a football background. Then transitioning to running, foot care became very important for me. I reduced football, reduced exposure to getting injured, and then was mindful of footwear. But the overarching thing is for strength, which I've paid big attention to through plyometrics and through strength work. 

I joined the Adidas Runners community as a community runner. I became a captain slash coach there, and that just grew exponentially in terms of my approach to running and like giving back.

I was drawn into the Adidas running community because of the coaches and the warmth that they showed me. I could never forget that. You always forget what people say, but you never forget that initial warmth. And when I became coach in 2018, my main thing was to replicate that warmth to new members, and it almost made it a domino effect. So all the coaches that we have replicate that because they felt the warmth in the early days of their running journey and they give it to our new members, and we hope that that continues for years to come. 

The running community that Adidas has created is not focused on running. It's making people better, better as humans. Running can come second. because it's a community of like-minded individuals, people that are striving to become better people.