Personal Bests:
Lucian winning the Great Eastern HM
1500m – 3.52.69
3000m – 8.19.36
5000m – 13.57.81
10k Road – 29.28
Half Marathon – 64.29
Lucian obtained an England vest for the International Parelloop 10K road in Holland.
So, I guess a little bit about myself. I’m Lucian, I’m a late blooming long distance runner that specialises between 5k and Half Marathon. Some of my more notable achievements include running 13:57 for 5000m, 64:29 for the Half Marathon in Barcelona and winning Lincoln 10k in 29:28 last year.
Throwback to 2016, before I loved legging it everywhere I go, my hobbies were drinking, smoking and dancing erratically* into the small hours of the morning. I was 25 and all those shenanigans had started to manifest themselves in the form of a sluggish, wheezy feeling and what resembled the early signs of a beer belly. You know what? I decided I wasn’t really a fan.
So I started running, not with the intention of competing in any shape or form, but more as a means for fitness (back then I barely knew who Mo Farah was). But as each run went by I found myself getting competitive with myself. Each time had to be faster than the last, but without set targets I found myself running intermittently – so with the intention of getting some consistency, I entered my first race, the Lincoln 10k.
I remember so vividly the feeling of not knowing what to expect, being completely anxious and brimming with race nerves. Some things don’t change. As the race started I almost felt like I’d gotten whiplash from the speed that the lead group went off; two of the group (Matt Bowser and James Straw) shot off a lot faster than everyone else, a 2:40 first kilometre which still blows my mind now. That year I finished 56th in 37 minutes.
At the time, I felt proud of the result. A month went by and I did another 10k with a similar result, but as the weeks went by I started having this feeling of unease. I knew I had been having a half hearted approach to training and didn’t feel like it really did justice to myself. So I started training a lot harder by running 4/5 times a week, always at a quicker pace until inevitably my legs started feeling like they were made of lead.
It was at this point that I turned to a guy I’d had little snippets of advice from at The Lincolnshire Runner. This guy was Mark Baddeley, who would later go on to be my coach and now I work with him. He told me something that now seems obvious, “Don’t run hard every day”. It was so simple but at the same time a revelation, so I changed how I was doing things. I started to alternate training paces and include the crucial “easy run”. One month later I’d run 33:56.
After that I joined Lincoln Wellington Athletics club to train with Mark and his group, which happened to make up to top 5 finishers of the Lincoln 10k. From that point onwards I’d been consistently able to lower my times every year through the mixture of guidance, teamwork and a lot of hard work.
*For the record, I still dance erratically!
Lots of love
Lucian x