Runner Profile: Sharon Dean
Firstly I must thank Linda Cassidy for nominating me! She’s a hard act to follow…a great athlete and another fellow road runner who I enjoy day sessions with.
My story as an athlete began when I was 11 and joined the local running club with my brother. I ran my first cross-country and hated it! But that did not put me off. After the winter season the coach said you need to join another club as this is boys and men only. I hadn’t really noticed that I was the only female! I transferred to the other club. I trained on the track that summer then another winter of cross country and my running really took off.
By age 15 I was racing and winning in the 800m and 1500m on the track. I was running for Scotland track and cross country. Yvonne Murray was one of my main rivals. See insert photo below. She might just have pipped me at the post in that race!
Yvonne went on to hold many titles at senior level winning medals at the Olympics 3000m race, gold in the world championships 1993 and also at Commonwealth Games 1994. Liz McColgan was also in the Scotland squad with me on several occasions including cross country. Liz featured in Athletics Weekly a month ago as one of the track and field legends.
Sliding doors moment!
Aged 18 I left home for university and gave up running. Fast forward to 2015. I was living in Felixstowe. One Tuesday evening I saw FRR warming up at Brackenbury. I spoke the coach who invited me to join in a session. For 3 years I enjoyed training with FRR and Sally Solomon kept trying to persuade me to do parkrun. What 9am on a Saturday morning? You must be mad I said!
I did my first parkrun at Ipswich with Sally and the other nutters… I loved it. I then moved onto cross country. Such comradery from my fellow FRRs. I enjoyed taking part.
I started to see my performances at parkrun improving. I started entering races: Christchurch park summer series, Kirton 5 and Coastal 10, and even had entered 10k in Glasgow in memory of my dad who had taken up running at the age of 50 and run the Glasgow marathon several times in just over 3 hours. Then I had to stop running due to injury and didn’t run again for 5 years.
I’ve rejoined FRR and this time I’m working more on conditioning and strengthening as I now realise that was my previous downfall! A big thank you to Helen Duggan and her runners’ pilates classes. I really enjoy being part of FRR. It is a great group and the coaching sessions are invaluable. I would never manage those sessions on my own. I’m planning on trying some cross country over the coming months and hope to see my performances start to improve again.
And finally a very big thank you to all of you who sang Happy Birthday to me at Paul Schwer’s annual event in the summer.
And to you Jo for making the fabulous birthday cake! It was amazing!
And to Marion and Kaye who made sure everyone knew it was my big birthday!!
I don’t get out much so not many photos. I did thoroughly enjoy the FRR Christmas party and running with Santa on the pub crawl. There was a rumour that the police were in pursuit of Santa and some reindeer but I’m sure it was the nuns who were guilty!
