My Forum

Pleased Bradley Wiggins won - I think it was the right result. Bit harsh on Mo (and David Weir) not to get in the top 3 though, although both Andy Murray and Jess Ennis would have been just as hard done by if they had finished outside the "podium" so several were always going to be disappointed this year.

Hard to believe that recent winners include Ryan Giggs, Michael Owen, Tony McCoy and Damon Hill (twice !). In many other years, any one of this year's 12 nominees would probably have won.

I didn't agree with giving the team of the year award to the entire Olympic and Paralympic teams - bit of a cop-out and should really be for a single sport. Mind you, the BBC would probably have found it a bit embarassing to give it to Team Sky !

Although Usain Bolt is probably the greatest (and most exciting) athlete I've ever seen, I think Lionel Messi should have got the oversead award this year. 90 goals (and counting) in 2012 alone at the very highest level is a phenomenal achievement.

Bradley Wiggins for me. Not just for winning the Tour and another Olympic Gold, but he also won all the other big races he entered this year (Paris- Nice, Criterium etc). Maybe the best year any UK sportsman has ever had ?

Hard on Andy Murray especially, but I believe he'll win several more Grand Slams now he's broken the barrier and when/if he wins Wimbledon, he'll be a guaranteed winner of SPOTY.

It has been a vintage year though. Any one of 6 or 7 others (Weir, Mo, Jess Ennis, Alastair Cook etc) would be far more worthy winners than some in recent years.

Restarted running at 38 after a 20 year gap and set all my PB's (bar one - see below) between 40 and 42.

Stayed pretty close to PB times up to and including age 47 (6 years ago) and set my 10 mile PB (66'24") that year. Admittedly, I had run far less 10 mile races than 5K, 10K, HM etc.

Since then I've been lucky with injuries and am still able to train consistently up to around 35 miles per week. However, best times have slowed inexorably from around 19 to 21 minutes (5K), 40 to 43 minutes (10K) and 89 to 99 minutes (HM).

Still love it though and try to chase "2 year PB's", i.e. best time within last 2 years.

Great points FB and Rafiki. It must be impossible to isolate 1 single factor , like how much running an individual does, from things like diet, stress, alcohol intake and most important of all, your genes !

Don't know if anyone else has seen the story on the front page of today's Telegraph online, but "experts" (ahem) are now saying that we should only run for between 30 and 50 minutes at a time and do no more than 1 or" a few" marathons or triathlons in our lives. Otherwise, we risk an early death from heart failure. This appears to be based on nothing more than the realtively early death of Micah True from "running too much", although Pheidippedes also gets a mention.

Appreciate that this sort of story comes round fairly regularly and will no doubt be seized upon by couch potatoes everywhere (some of the readers comments underneath the story are so typical). I doubt if it will make the slighhtest bit of difference to any of us, but the danger is it might put off some people from taking up running in the first place.