It’s an honour to have been nominated again for blog of the year at the 2018 Running Awards so for anyone who has ended up here by mistake, or nosiness and want to know what it’s all about it’s only fair to shed a little light.

In 2017 I was lucky enough to catch the breeze and somehow end up taking the Silver Award as runner up behind Ben Smith’s 401 in the best blog category. It’s true, really. Look here’s a picture. I’d like to think the gormless smile is counteracted by the sharpness of the scarf 🙂

That was a real shock and an honour. I remember being asked on the night “So what’s your angle?” I guess that’s what you all want to know and I didn’t really think I had one, but if I had to sum it up it’s the story of an former Junior international athlete who became an overweight chainsmoker, and who started back running over 20 years later with a wrecked body, no confidence and a lot to prove to himself. I blogged to keep myself running, and not regressing, and kept it going. My only quirk? I have to find a song in my collection to match the blog/ the race. And I add it to the playlist that you can find here the markgallmac spotify playlist.

I’ve seen the other “real” bloggers (I still don’t know how I got that award, they know what they’re doing, I just bluff it) and they are all doing their X factor and Big Brother best bits montages to tell you who they are and I guess that’s a good idea if you want to know more. So what am I about?

My big thing here was my first marathon at London. There was a big build up but the blog was here. (The markgallmac London extravaganza). There’s a lot of coverage on individual races, some that went well some that didn’t. This one was a disaster and earned me my mantel as the most irritating runner in Scotland. Crash – the disaster blog. I also like to look back at my old days, and this one is one of my favourites, my first win as a junior boy, and seeing my Dad’s pride – The sheepskin of justice. Sometimes I just mouth off, this one ended up in the Athletics Weekly monthly supplement Accept yourself blog. Sometimes I just talk about exploring on holiday running on holiday  or being on the telly Being on BBCs PointlessSo a bit of everything. All I can say is that everything is honest, sometimes too honest. And at times self deprecating. But I try to retain a sense of humour, have some pics, some tunes and now even videos – my last blog on the Cumbernauld 10k here was video’d on the gopro Cumbernauld 10k 2017.

So that’s me. Why not fire up the playlist, play the tunes, read some of the blogs, and if you like them consider a wee vote on the link below. It’s under publications and online/ blog. markgallmac – the most irritating runner in Scotland ? VOTE FOR MARKGALLMAC HERE.

Thanks for reading, here’s a few pics after your promised tune. From their first album the XX introduce themselves with an instrumental that appears everywhere on reality shows now. So have it.