Laurence Wilks
I started running at boarding school as a way to avoid homework, I was reasonable e.g. county level for there 1500, at 15 I broke my ankle and tore the ligaments badly. By the time I was recovered I’d lost my ‘fast’ fitness but still managed to run 5 trail marathons by the time I was 19. I then discovered bikes so ended up focusing on road and mountain bike riding and very occasionally I’d go for a short, <5k, run.
When I was 29 I had my first brush with cancer and had a significant amount of surgery and treatment, one thing that helped me a lot afterwards was setting targets and being able to slowly improve. Then at 45 I had a second cancer and this time I had minimal treatment, just surgery, again having targets helped me get back to where I wanted to be fitness wise.
Fast forward a lot of years to 2013 and I discovered ParkRun, I was very inconsistent during the first few years but since 2018 I started to go regular and also volunteered, I’m now at 220+ ParkRuns and 55+ volunteers. ParkRun fired up my lost love of running and I’m now just sub 24 minutes for the 5K. I started to look to run a few longer distances so I joined my local run club and targeted running a 10K, I’m lucky to have the Eastleigh 10k course just down the road so I’ve now run this 5 times and this year set a PB of 51:42 which at 58 years old I was happy with.
In May 2023 I ran the Weston Super Mare half marathon and incredibly broke my 10k, 15k, 20k and half marathon PBs in the one race. I’m was looking to doing my 5th Clarendon event and it’s had been my main focus all year so I was looking forward to getting it done! I also had an eye on a PB to complete my set :-)
On 30th August 2023 I had what I thought was a vertigo attack, this was then diagnosed as a Transient Ascetic Attack (TIA) or mini-stroke! Further investigations changed this diagnosis to a full stroke. I was gutted as my consultant, an ultra runner, advised me to not run the Marathon as it was still unclear of the cause.
I am really looking forward to picking up my 5 year trophy when I cross the finish line.
Fast forward to 2024, I have been cleared to run and so far I have broken my 5k PB (25:22 -> 23:44) and my 10K PB (51:42 -> 48:51) so my patience and persistence has paid off. My next races are the Eastleigh 10k, the Brighton Marathon, Bristol half Marathon and then my A race the Clarendon Marathon.
Laurence Wilks.