Introducing this month's member spotlight, Barry Frost.

We reached out to Barry to ask him some questions about himself and his running career, before and after joining Run Nation's running club. Here is his story.

Barry started running as a young boy in primary school, starting with sprint distances for his area/county. However, due to a delayed growth spurt he felt he could no longer compete with taller runners, so he spent his teen years often running for fun in areas such as Bushy Park and kept this up for some time.

However in his later adult years he moved away from running to focus on other sports, such as tennis, ultimate frisbee and 5 a-side football until, and I quote, "I looked in the mirror at 40 and saw the 10+ Kg I’d acquired while raising young kids! I started running again and the weight came off surprisingly quickly." 

Within a fews years of hard training he was back to his old self, running a good number of 10ks, half marathons and three marathons including a PB of 4:18:00 at the London Marathon (which could of been quicker had cramp not stepped in to hinder his run).

Barry Frost has countless milestones for his running career, including a few V60 age category wins with us here at Run Nation, his latest coming on November 26th 2023 with the Matfen BIG 10 Miler. Which makes sense as he has mentioned his favourite running distance is 10k and 5k, in particular he mentioned to us that his favourite running event is one our events, the Run Northumberland Coquet 10k and some parkruns too such as Pastures at Alnwick and Bushy Park, which springs back nostalgic memories of running in this Park in his younger years.

On asking him about his favourite highligh of his running career so far Barry gave this amazing answer; "Probably not one single thing, rather overcoming challenges along the way (not least life-saving surgery last year) to still be running, enjoying it (most of the time!), keeping fit and challenging myself."

A running veteran who has ran in all distances from 100 Yards to Marathons, with PBs some younger runners could be proud of; 10k 40:40 and Half marathon 1:34:00 respectiveley. 

Barry Frost is truly an inspiration to those who feel its too late to start running, or those who feel like they can't overcome certain challanges, all the barriers laid before him he overcame and if he can do it you can too!

We could all be a bit more like Barry Frost, you can start by joining the Run Nation Running club

https://runnation.co.uk/shop/product/run-nation-basic-membership/2886