I help injured runners love their running again. I’m a qualified running coach who specialises in assessing, treating and rehabilitating injuries — but the thing that probably qualifies me most is that I know exactly what it’s like to be stopped in your tracks.

Running, then not running

When I was ten, my passion for running really took off. All I wanted to do was run about and win stuff, so that’s exactly what I went and did. Over the next eight years I took part in all sorts of events and won a fair few — representing my county at running, and a couple of world championship triathlons along the way.

Then at eighteen I got injured, and running had to take a back seat. I’m still not entirely sure what happened. One minute I was running along, the next I was on the ground looking round for the sniper who must have just shot me in the backside.

There was no sniper. Just a lot of pain.

The help that wasn’t

I saw a back specialist and the hospital physio team. They weren’t much help. If anything they were unsympathetic — the general sense being that I was somehow to blame for being injured and in pain.

That disappointment is the reason I started learning about pain and injury for myself.

The more I learned, the better I felt about myself — and the more I could manage things on my own.

Keeping fit was a big part of it. I’d taken up swimming and cycling at seventeen, so I built them into my recovery. Bit by bit I got better, and eventually I was running again.

Back to racing

Once I was back, I started competing in triathlons again. That took me around the world, representing Great Britain at two world championships. I’ve also done three Ironman triathlons — genuinely tough, and genuinely good fun. My last one was in 2013.

Since then I’ve moved into helping other people recover from their own injuries, so they can have as much fun as I’ve had.

From a clinic to your kitchen table

I opened my clinic in 2019. Then covid arrived and, like a lot of people, I had to work out how to do the job differently. I started assessing runners over video, fully expecting it to be a temporary fix until things went back to normal.

It wasn’t temporary. It turned out that most of what makes an assessment genuinely useful — your history, your training, watching how you actually move — works perfectly well through a screen. And it quietly removed the two things that had always got in the way.

So I transitioned gradually, and these days I work fully online. A runner in the Highlands gets exactly the same session as one down the road from me in Cambridgeshire.

If I think you need hands-on treatment or imaging, I’ll say so, and I’ll tell you who to see. But for working out what’s actually going on and what to do about it, this is simply a better way to work.

What I actually believe

• Pain is very rarely a measure of damage. It usually means an area has become sensitive, not that you’ve broken something.
• Most running injuries leave nothing permanent behind. With sensible management, they shouldn’t stop you doing what you love.
• You should end up needing me less, not more. The aim is that you can manage your own load and recovery.
• Honest beats confident. Where the evidence is thin, I’ll tell you it’s thin.

If I’ve done it, anyone can.