Ahead of the Olympic Games, Jack Gray, Senior Transport Consultant in our Cambridge office, shares his experiences of running at an international level, and explains how he uses his mental and physical training to deliver for PJA.
“Despite my (relatively) youthful looks and abundance of (somewhat greying) hair, I have been running competitively for 15 years.
As a long-distance runner, I favour distances from 5km to half-marathon and cross country. I have earned numerous England caps on the road, track and over cross country; however, my proudest achievement was representing Great Britain at the European 10,000m Championships in London, where we won team silver.
As a sport that is often defined for its attrition and suffering, people often ask me why I run?
It’s a simple, yet stimulating, question that is difficult to answer with a punchy response.
I primarily run because I love the thrill of competitive sport, and the sense of camaraderie and sportsmanship that the running community is blessed with. Yet running competitively also breeds behaviours and routines that I apply, and rely on, in professional life.
As a transport planner and business case practitioner, my work requires me to strategise, programme, holistically analyse data and broader socioeconomic trends, innovate and ultimately deliver projects to time and budget.
But how does this relate to competitive running?
This summer we will witness finely tuned athletes step onto the hallowed Olympic stage. Here, they will have minutes, or even seconds, to execute four years of mental and physical training that has been meticulously structured and adapted to enable them to ‘peak’ for their moment in the spotlight.
Competitive sport thus demands us to programme and structure our training, to innovate to find those marginal gains, and, after all that, it requires us to be composed enough to deliver our end product in pressurised situations.
Having the time to train flexibly around work not only releases stress and improves my mood and confidence, but it also builds qualities and behaviours, such as time management and reflexivity, that we hold at the core of our ethos at PJA
To run is to be free, and from free minds innovation is born.”
Jack Gray, BSc (Hons) MRes
Jack is a Senior Transport Planner and an accredited Better Business Cases Practitioner based in our Cambridge office.
He has a wealth of experience advising public and private sector clients across a wide range of transport planning and traffic engineering projects.
Jack’s technical experience ranges from initial site feasibility assessments through to the delivery of business cases for major transport schemes.
Find out more on our transport services, including transport planning and business case development, here
Sign up for more news from PJA here
