Q. How long have you been a member of Queen’s Park Harriers?
I joined the club in May 2022.
Q. What's the best thing about running?
My running started solely because of lockdown because I needed to find a hobby and running was easy to access. Now I love the community and health benefits running gives me.
Q. What's your favourite running event?
From an individual point of view the Half Marathon is my favourite distance with London Landmarks being my favourite event. From a club perspective I really enjoyed Summer League last year. The camaraderie of being part of the club in great weather and, of course, the cake!!
Q. What would you say is your greatest running achievement?
I think joining the club, which led to a massive improvement in my running and helped me achieve a PB at the Amsterdam Half in October last year.
Q. What else do you do?
Outside of my work as a Principal Nurse Manager in an out of hours emergency veterinary hospital and running, I’m currently learning Italian - another side effect of lockdown.
Q. Tell us something surprising about yourself that other members may not know
I was born with 2 significant medical issues. The first being talipes, a malformation of the feet and ankles where both feet faced inwards and rotated upwards. Several operations during infancy and childhood corrected this. And the second being hydrocephalus , or ‘water on the brain’, when a child is born with excess fluid in the brain. The pressure of this fluid can cause damage to the brain. I have 2 shunts (basically plastic tubes) that drain the fluid from my brain to my abdomen, again following several surgeries from infancy to early adulthood. In light of this I am running the London Marathon, my first, in aid of The National Brain Appeal, a charity that leads research into numerous neurological conditions.
