painter and decorator) first took a 10-year-old Jess to an athletics summer camp as a boredom-busting tactic has paid off in spades. In 2009 she claimed heptathlon gold in the World Championships in Berlin, before taking a medal in the same desirable shade

, and Vinnie, a painter and decorator) first took a 10-year-old Jess to an athletics summer camp as a boredom-busting tactic has paid off in spades. In 2009 she claimed heptathlon gold in the World Championships in Berlin, before taking a medal in the same

the Games. I still managed to run pretty fast so it was a big surprise really.What’s coming up for you this year?We’ve got the World Championships in Moscow this summer, and we’ve got about ten weeks to go until the start of the outdoor season so I’m doing

of track running or if you have had a summer break, you may need a couple of weeks of steady running, getting yourself up to the right mileage, before you start on the appropriate programme. If you are already running regularly on the road, you can start

in the middle of the summer, so he came back to see me, asking for another steroid injection. I decided that wasn’t the best course of action, so I’ve sent him off for a consultation with an orthopaedic surgeon, who will scan the injury. Depending

ideas for your spring or summer holiday. The races listed here are not necessarily the best-known races in the country – we assume you don’t need to know any more about the Paris or Médoc Marathons – nor are they necessarily the biggest, although some

few great marathons.I tell you this to explain how I came to be standing in a cold wind which was posing as a summer morning in July, in the middle of an eight-week motorcycle tour. In this particular race, runners who needed more than five hours

of their own. Before I knew it, the saddlebags were packed, the motorbike was tuned, and, early last summer, I hit the road.The plan was to ride from Nashville, Tennessee, to Washington DC, to Portland, Oregon, to San Diego, California, and then back

There we were. Two middle-aged men in a Firebird on a summer night. The top was down, the V8 was rumbling. We were just driving around, minding our own business.And there he was. A 20-something young man in a four-cylinder sports saloon with loud

, but what little self-esteem I still possessed was seriously eroded. Here was I, living a life of blameless purity – and far from enjoying a sort of athletic Indian summer, a swansong of blistering times and smashed records, I was relying upon my dog, Oscar