(Sibling) rivalry

One of the more pleasing aspects of my transition to "just" running has been that my brother has also followed a similar trajectory, albeit from climbing rather than triathlon. It may be that the simple fact of us both moving to our mid/late twenties would have had a positive influence on our relationship but I honestly believe that our shared love of running (in pretty much all its forms) has played an important part. We live in different cities and, granted, don't exactly see each other every week, but when I cast my mind back to some of the important memories of the last four years, many involve running and of those, most of them involve Steve.*

During both my ultra attempts (the successful Hadrian's Wall and the spectacular failure that was the Thames Path) Steve was an integral part of the crew that supported me, be that offering gentle encouragement or literally coaxing me along with the promise of pizza.

About 70 miles into Hadrian's Wall - even now I remember that peperoni was a bad idea

About 40 miles along the Thames Path - before the wheels came off

I was able to repay the favour a year later by supporting Steve on his Paddy Buckley attempt. Having set out with him on the opening leg at 0230 and struggling to keep up I could see he was on for a good day but I can honestly say that seeing his head torch appear 23 hours and 54 minutes later - 6 minutes before the cut off time - ranks not only as one of my top sporting memories but also made me pretty proud. I include the photo below purely for your amusement - it really was a very warm day.

Outside of the slightly stupid challenges I've enjoyed simply being able to share a sport that we both feel so passionately about, despite both having been fairly active for the best part of a decade (longer in Steve's case) this has been the first time our sporting interests and abilities have coincided so well; our Christmas day runs are fast becoming as traditional as the turkey.

25.12.14 - we should probably wash the hats this year - they're quite absorbent

Most of all I feel that we've both spurred each other on in an almost entirely positive way. As has so often been the case outside of sport, we've each chosen our own path within running (I prefer the road and Steve prefers the trails and the fells) yet we seem to feed of each others successes and failures. I only chose to write on this subject having seen Steve's recent blog on his up and coming race at the Glencoe Skyline Unsurprisingly we both suffer from similar foibles, including but not limited to:

• being overly critical of ourselves 
• not following our own advice 
• occasional pessimism about the training we've logged. 

I suppose in my long winded way I'm trying to express how much value I place in having someone (brother or otherwise) who can act as a training partner, sounding board and objective advisor, someone who you want to beat but for whom you can be just as happy when they win, even if it's you who has been beaten. Best of luck at Glencoe Steve, I have no doubt you'll complain of being either "goosed"/"shonkey" but I also have no doubt that'll you'll give it everything you have on the day.

Happy running.

*I feel I need to mention that my engagement is also a happy memory as it was pointed out to me last week this should probably have featured in the list of this "things that have happened to me since I last blogged" in my last blog post.