MANY people approaching their 60th birthday may be inclined to think about putting their feet up and taking it easy, but for one Romsey resident, nothing could be further from this.

Lottie Budd is the practice manager at David White Opticians, and with just months before her 60th, she has clocked-up more than half a century of half marathons.

Lottie, of Greatbridge Road, took-up running as the Covid pandemic began to ease, having never previously been interested in such a pursuit, but it was the wish of her eldest daughter Emily for them to have a shared hobby that was the deciding factor, herself being a keen runner.

“I was fighting off my daughter for years and years, saying ‘I’m absolutely not a runner’,” she said. 

“She’d been nagging for me years about taking it up.”

By chance, Lottie was scrolling through Facebook one day and came across an advert saying: ‘Last chance to enter Winchester half marathon’. She took the plunge and signed-up.

“And I thought ‘maybe I need something to actually work towards’, so I entered and I rang her and I told her, she said ‘Oh, that’s fantastic! When is it?’

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“‘It's in four weeks' time,’ I said, and she was so cross with me. She said I couldn’t build up in that time, as it’s usually couch to 5k in five weeks.

“But I did it – I worked like stink, and was up at 5 o’clock every morning.”

Lottie and Emily did complete the race, and Lottie decided it would be the first of many. In nearly three years, she has completed another 50 halves, smaller races as well as one full marathon, and has journaled everything along the way, as well as joining the Romsey Road Runners group in January 2022, an organisation she praises.

Many of the runs have taken Lottie all over the world, including some special and unique races, including in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago, where there are around 3,000 polar bears to 2,000 residents.

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She cites runs like this, as well as Berlin – which finishes at the Brandenburg Gate – as some of the most special. She has also completed the half marathon in Gothenburg – her home city – three times, with the route taking-in a bridge below which was where her husband Nigel – a retired Navy sea captain – was moored aboard HMS Hermes, which led to them meeting at a cocktail party.

This marathon led to Lottie even being interviewed on Swedish national radio.

As Lottie rarely works early in the week, she and Nigel use the runs abroad for plethora of short holidays, where they can enjoy the sightseeing once the runs are over.

Despite saying she doesn’t push herself, Lottie is proud that she can often be timed near to or the top of her age group. 

“There are moments where you think I'm never going to do this again, and I give myself excuses to stop,” she says. “And then I still run it and then I finish it, and you feel great, and then you book your next one.”

Whilst Lottie, who is planning many more runs to come, says running is “hard work” and therefore dislikes it in some way, she says that it is “fun”, and says that: “If I can do it, anyone can do it.”