About me

Currently

I currently live on the southern fringes of Sydney and work in the CBD.

In brief

I grew up in England and I moved to Australia in 1990. i started running as a 16 year old youth to help get fit whilst studying for exams and continued to run in as many fun runs as i could – today i have run more than 75 marathons with a best time of 2hrs 49mins, many of these are ultramarathons – longer than a marathon – my best effort being 176km in 24 hours. these days i still run a lot, but am also a passionate book reader, and do yoga, ocean swimming, kayaking, standup-paddling. i would class myself as a vegetarian since about 1991, and most of the time as a vegan. i am married to a committed runner, with 3 children. (i don’t list my day job activities here as i am so much more than a day job – see my linked-in profile for job stuff).

Non-work cv

• 2010-current: I am a co-founder of the coastal classic running race in Sydney’s royal national park and am currently the course marker.
• 2000-current: I started an ad-hoc series of running events, in the sydney area to overcome a shortage of ‘official’ events.
• 2004-current: I helped start the Australian version of loco running shoes and am still a director of the company.
• 1997-2011:  I helped found the coolrunning australia website in 1997, and was the president of the organising committee until 2011 – all the time we were the largest athletics or running website in australia, beating athletics australia and all the running magazines.
• 2005-2011: I started a program to recycle running shoes - by collecting old shoes and distributing them to more needy and shoe-less people. We have then merged into Shoes For Planet Earth.
• 2010-2011: I was on the race organising committee for the six foot track marathon running race in the NSW Blue Mountains.
• 2008-current: I started a very small community-focused organisation keepbundeenalitterfree.com.
• 2001-2009: I was the race director for australia’s 5th largest marathon, the six foot track marathon, with over 800 runners & raises over $30,000 per year for the rural fire service. it was also the national trail ultra championships each year.
• 2006-2007 : I consulted with the wilderness society to help create the wild endurance event.
• 1995-2007: I was the webmaster for the australian ultra runners association.
• 2003-2005: I was part of the selection committee for the 100km world cup team on behalf of the australian ultra runners association and athletics australia.2003-2005 i was invited by CEO of athletics australia to join the “running australia participation committee” to help guide & assist fun runs in australia.
• 2000-2004: I was as official course marker for the sydney trailwalker, an event that makes over $1 million per year as a fundraiser for oxfam. from 2000 to 2003 i was also the map drawer.
• 1995-2004: I was the webmaster for the sydney striders running club, in fact the initiator of their website.
• 1994-2001I I was NSW representative for the australian ultra runners association.
• 1995-1997: I wrote some race management and timing software for sporting spectrum which was then just a small company starting up to organise sporting and running events.
• 1992-2002: I spent almost 10 years serving on the committee of the sydney striders running club, in various positions from database manager, website manager, uniform manager, run host (Berowra Big Dipper) for approx 12 years (1995-2007) and was vice-president for 2 years.

Previous history

I was born on in chiswick, west london, england. I moved to whitton (halfway between twickenham and hounslow) when I was about 3 yrs old. you could see the rugby ground from my bedroom window (twickenham is where the english rugby team play their international matches, although i never saw a game there as i am not a rugby fan). one of my earliest memories was the moon landing in 1969 when i was approx 3. during my childhood i was a real soccer nut and played county level badminton (middlesex county covered most of london so that was pretty good). i went to the local comprehensive school and finished up with 11 ‘o’ levels and 3 ‘a’ levels. i started to run when i was about 16, to keep fit during exam time. at 18, i left home to go to southampton university to do a maths / computing bsc. this took 3 years and i was lucky to pass as i spent so much time running and training and racing. when i left there i moved back to london and started working for one of the ‘big four’ uk banks as a computer programmer. i spent some og my uni vacations travelling in china, tibet, nepal and india, as well as some time in the usa and bermuda. i bought a flat in kington-upon-thames with my girlfriend, dawn, who i first met at school when she was in my class at 11 yrs old. the best thing about the flat (it was pretty small and on a busy main road) is that it was just around the corner from richmond park, the best running territory in london. its about 9 or 10 miles circumference and is also close to the thames towpath which runs alongside the river. after a couple of years, we moved to australia arriving with a suitcase, $20 and a credit card. i started working for one of the major banks there as a computer programmer/analyst. i moved through the ranks of programmer, analyst, designer, team leader and systems manager. currently i manage numerous projects in the “platform infrastructure” area which is all the nasty stuff that all the application programmers try to ignore eg drivers, hardware, remote access, network and protocols etc. a particular challenge i enjoy is working with business clients to understand, explain and come up with joint solutions to real business problems. dawn and i got married on a pleasure cruiser on sydney harbour on 17th November 1991 and we became australian citizens in 1993. Since then we have had four children, 3 girls and a boy : dylan (born & died 1994), jazmin (1996), chelsea (1998) and kody (2001).