Being fit and happy!

Alyson Dixon, a marathon runner from Great Britain was the first British woman to cross the line in the 2016 London Marathon, thereby earning a place in the Team GB squad for the Rio Olympics where she made the top 30 against the world's very best. That was the culmination of years of hard work and training for the 40-year-old who first took part in the Great North Run when she was 18 but didn't run her first marathon until 2010.

She recently visited Hyderabad and interacted with young and enthusiast marathon runner from the city. About her first visit to India and Hyderabad, she shares, “In my running career spanning over 29 years I have pretty much covered six of the seven continents on this planet. However, for some reason or the other, while I have always wanted to travel to India, it never happened. Interestingly, when I finally got to know that I was to travel to India, there were three cities I really wanted to go given the amazing running culture India has managed to build, namely Hyderabad, Bangalore and Pune. As luck would have it these are the very same cities that I am visiting, and I am really thankful to MultiFit for having facilitated the same."

“Having interacted with a whole bunch of enthusiastic runners, I am very confident that Hyderabad has some very good marathon runners and given the right training and guidance they stand a good chance on the international circuit,” Alyson adds.

Her day starts with running, Alyson says, "In the morning I run 6 miles to 10 miles and then I come home and have breakfast and go to the gym and do some call training, flexibility training and weight training. After lunch I take a nap after that I do physiotherapy. In the evening I run 10 to 18 miles."

About her fitness funda, she says, "My fitness philosophy is kind of just looking after yourself. Your whole body, physical fitness, mind and mental fitness go hand in hand. The fitter your body is the fitter your mind is."
"It is really important for me to be fit. It is a whole-body experience and I love the feeling of being fit. You feel healthy your muscles are nice and toned. When everything is healthy your life looks so much better. It is very important for me to live a happy and healthy life. It is also important for us to teach the kids, as they learn from us what we are doing."
Like any other daughter, Alyson's father is her inspiration she says, "My inspiration is my dad because my father was a marathon winner so just watching him training, investing and completing the marathon inspired me to run too. He got to 221 milestone which is quite fast."

Alyson is preparing for different competitions, about it she says, "I hope to do a springtime marathon, I have not decided which one yet. If I am doing well enough, I will participate in the Tokyo Olympics, which is 18 months down the line. I am now 40 so I am getting quite old. So, my main aim is to train. I just enjoy training and be happy.” For the upcoming athletes she says, "I would say that the biggest piece of advice is to take things easy, don't try and kind of jump too far to push too quickly. Just quit everything into bite-size chunks start off very small."