"Each step forward has a sacred meaning of its own"   Sri Chinmoy

Sri Chinmoy Sports Day 800m Race Walk - Da Silva Field, Jamaica, Queens - August 2026

Sports Day is always an amazing event, whether you're watching or taking part, but of course I always want to be taking part if I can. With my knee injury still only a few months into a very long haul back to fitness, there was no way I could do my usual favourite event, the 1-Mile on the track. The jumping and throwing also looked way too risky - right now the limit of my exercise is 3 or 4 miles 11-minute pace jogging or a 26 mile moderate bike ride. Faster running and hard biking were off the menu and even swimming made the knee seriously sore. That did leave walking though, and Sports Day has an over-50s race walk. The event seemed to have my name on it, so I signed up.

Going into the event my only aim was to enjoy it, have the thrill of being in a race again, but not do myself any damage. After steady progress on the recovery, I had stalled at around 4 miles of jogging and the soreness from the torn meniscus had been feeling worse rather than better in the preceding weeks, whether I worked it or rested it. Of course I wanted to try and sneak into the top 3, as I have done well in our walking events over recent years, even placing second in 2025.

The organisers, for reasons I can't quite fathom, decided to call the relays forward and I was therefore expecting the walk to come last, after the mile as per usual, but as soon as the relays were done and dusted they called for walkers to come to the line. I knew it would be 5 minutes or so before they actually got us started, so that was my warm up time - jogging interspersed with short intervals of race walking to loosen up and get a feel for my race pace. I settled myself on the line alongside Ekalabhya and some other quick guys as I was hoping & planning to go for it, but my strategy was to hang in behind the leaders or pack and then see if I could warm myself up to a good second lap and move up the placings. As soon as the clapperboard sounded to start us off, I stuck to the line between lane 1 and lane 2, giving the guys either side of me their chance to stride out and take the lead. Nobody seemed to want to front this one out, so I decided I would Paula Radcliffe it and lead from the start. By the time we came off the bend I was walking fast with a quick turnover, a short stride and a big arm-swing, just as I had in my handful of walk training sessions back on the Straight Mile in Filton. It felt good, I was in a race, I was actually racing. This was a real relief after so much thinking over recent months about what I couldn't do - here was something I could do.

Of course, once you are out front the challenge is to maintain the pace and stay there, hold off the surges from other athletes and manage to keep your nose in front. The whole thing went like a dream, my mind very silent and my body able to respond each time I asked it to push harder and maintain the pace as things started to hurt.

I got up to 164bpm which is the highest my heart rate has been for a while. I was aware of someone - was that Ekalabhya? - close behind as I came on to the straight first time round so i kicked with more than half the event to go. In reality I wasn't accelarating at all, just putting in more effort to maintain the early pace, but if felt like a surge. I was concerned that Udayachal, the merciless but fair race official, might call me out for my style so I made certain of locking my knees on each stride. The calf muscles protested but my knee, amazingly, was not complaining.

At last I was on the home straight and keeping up the pace, the guy behind apparently not gaining on me. I crossed the line thrilled to have clocked 4.43. Second place was Pataka and Ekalabhya third. I felt fantastic afterwards, gazing up from the stands into the simpsons-esque blue sky with a sprinkling of summer clouds realising that despite being chronically injured, I had still been able to find an outlet for my athletic aspirations.

The next day I had the honour of receiving a gold medal at aspiration ground. It doesn't get much better than that.

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