I’m a Christchurch boy. I grew up in St Albans and went to St Andrew’s. Now I live in South Brighton with my wife and daughter. We’ve been there three years.
I have 11 staff, I sell thousands of pairs of shoes a year and I run 160km a week. So I’m busy, but once I drive across the Bridge Street bridge to South Brighton, the whole world decompresses.
Running led to where I am now. I was into it at high school. I was Canterbury road champion. My maths teacher, Phil Costley, was a Commonwealth Games marathoner. I also had other great mentors at school.
In 2010 I moved to Wanaka and worked for Frontrunner there. They sponsored me as an athlete. In 2014 I moved back to Christchurch and took on a role in the franchise head office – we have 11 branches.
I decided I would rather be on the floor than in the office and then a chance came up to purchase the store in The Colombo and we took over in 2016.
The Colombo is a fantastic location for accessibility. We’re a destination shop so we need a space that is easy to get to, with easy parking and so on.
It’s a bit quieter here and that really works for us. It means we get the time with each customer to deliver a premium service.
Moving into sponsoring the marathon was about making sure Christchurch has a major-city marathon. So we stepped in to sponsor it.
New Zealand’s premier running franchise should be sponsoring a marathon. It’s ideal, it’s what we do.
I’ll be running in the half marathon on the day. That’s my specialist distance. I’m hoping to qualify for the World Athletics Half Marathon Championships in Latvia in October.