Just one year after a chance introduction to club athletics, former fun runner Jodie Lynch just can’t believe that she has become a major player in Inverness Harriers’ successful women’s distance team and the club’s second fastest female marathon performer ever.

The 32 year old, who also fits running a business into a hectic schedule, had been dabbling in recreational running and managed to complete a 10K in a modest 48 minutes. Now, 12 months after becoming part of an ever growing group of woman runners at the Inverness club, she completed her first full marathon in fifth place at Lochaber on April 14th in 3 hours 20 minutes 31 seconds and led home the winning Inverness Harriers team. In the run up to the marathon, a year’s training with her Harriers team mates also saw her 10K time come down to 41:08, while in the Inverness Half Marathon she also improved hugely to break the benchmark women’s time of 90 minutes with 89:51.

And it might never have happened were it not for a chance encounter in the chair at Hair Therapy, the Inverness salon she also finds time to run with help from her mother and sister.

“One of my clients in the salon is a friend of Alison Wilson at the Harriers and when she heard that I had struggled through that first 10K in 48 minutes she suggested I should go down to the club and it’s the best thing I ever did,” said Jodie. “It’s been unbelievable and it’s made a huge difference and I can’t thank the people there enough. There’s a whole group of women and we all get on so well and train a lot together. Alison in particular has been like a surrogate sister to me. But there are also girls like Paula Ross who ran the Lochaber and London Marathons in a week and Roma Shepherd and Jenny Bannerman where I learned a lot from seeing how hard she trains.Every one is beating personal bests at the moment because they are training so hard and there`s such a good  group spirit within the club at the moment “.

Jodie has become such a fan of Inverness Harriers that she even had her nails specially done specially in the club’s maroon and gold colours for the Lochaber Marathon.

Keeping her salon going along with the many running miles needed for the marathon is no easy matter, and in the hairdressing business competing on Saturdays can be a problem. But Jodie is now well and truly hooked on a competitive running career which might well have passed her by.

“I’m absolutely delighted about how much I’ve improved and I just wish I’d found the club earlier,” she said. “I hadn’t thought at all about being a competitive athlete but it’s all happened for me over the last year and I’m loving it. It’s so friendly and not elitist at all. They were so happy to have me as an absolute beginner. I was absolutely delighted to be a member of a winning team for the first time in the Nairn 10K so I couldn’t believe that I then became our first finisher in the winning team at the Lochaber marathon a few weeks later. I’m now determined to find that extra half a minute to break 3:20 when I go to New York again for the marathon there in November. I also want to have another go at a 10K once I’ve fully recovered from the Lochaber marathon.”

Jodie was a member of the group which flew to New York last November to run the marathon for the Archie Foundation charity. They were bitterly disappointed when the event was cancelled in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy and are now pledged to return.

“It was very disappointing to miss out on New York after going all the way over there for the Archie Foundation so I’m very much looking forward to going back again this year and another personal best over there would be great. But I’ve got times to chase in a lot of half marathons and 10Ks before that over the summer.”