My Forum

I use a IMAC 10.7.5 Lion. I can't post when I use Safari (version 6.0.1). It is fine with firefox.

I live in a village just outside Birmingham. We have over 50 miles of Public Rights of Way within 5 miles of the village. We are thinking of waymarking some off road  running trails along these rights of way.

- A few months ago I saw something on buying waymarks etc. I can't find this anywhere. Has anyone got a link?

- Has anyone been through a similer project and could give some advice?

I've been running for just over 25 years. I started running when I was single so any partner I had knew I wasn't going to stop running for them. Although I've found some people got terribly jealous of me. The obvious were mates trying to get me drunk the night before a race. - that was easy to cope with! The best one though was at work. I was working at a clients site as part of a large project. I went running with the some of the clients staff during lunch hour. I was accused of not being totally committed to the project by a colleague. She was fat aat and actually went to the pub a couple of lunchtimes a week.

My advice is just to stick with it but always suggest your partner comes along with you.

Going back to when I was at primary school which was in the late 1960's one of the activities we did was learn to swim.  After we attained a certain standard we then went on to take personnel survival tests. It invoved jumping into the water with cloths on, geting undressed in the pool, making floats out of clothes etc. We did have an annual swimming gala.

I wander what Cameron would think of it. I'm sure he would replace the personnel survival training with races every week.

One thing that is evident is politicians want participation in sport to increase at all levels.

I live in the West Midlands. I remember the running boom of the 80's and early 90's. In my area there were lots of events. In the summer moths most weekends there would be a choice of 10k's. There were many 1/2 marathons. I remember doing the Black Country 1/2 one Sunday, the Handsworth 1/2 the next. I could have entered the Sandwell 1/2 two weeks later. Most leisure  centres organised a 10k a year.

This came to an end.These were the reasons I am aware of. The police were stopped from having a presence at the events. It became more difficult to close roads and funding was stopped. The situation is different now. There are still races put on by clubs. They don't aim to attract the novice runners that Fox Hollies 10K would have. The big city 1/2 marathons, such as the Birmingham 1/2, are very expensive to enter.It is not all bad news. On Saturdays we have Park Runs. Let's hope these continue to grow and attract lots of new novice runners.

Every politician I have seen interviewed says they want to fund sport at all levels. It's very easy to say after such a successful Olympics. Lets see what happens though when they decide money needs to be saved.A few months ago they were talking about privatising forests. It could have made 100 of miles of running and cycling trails less accessible.