Profile

I live with my wife Lynne (we have been married for 11 years), in a 300 year old farm house, where there are holes in the walls and the floors are far from flat. We have a son (Daniel), yes it can get confusing who lives and works in Macclesfield as a design engineer.  We have two dogs called Harry and Winnie, who are better than watching TV.  Harry is a 4-year old Labrador who thinks he is still four months old and Winnie is a rescue dog, she is a cross between a Labrador and vizsla and is bonkers .  We currently have 6 chickens, all of which are named after sci-fi characters and a cat called Nelson.  I am a Sci-fi fan and a huge Star Wars and Star Trek fan. As well as being an Exercise Physiologist I am a former Paralympic cyclist and competed for Great Britain in three Sports; swimming, athletics and track cycling.  I am actually registered blind, I have what is termed optical albinism which means that I am very short sighted, what most people see from 20 metres away I can only see from 2metres away.  This though has not stopped me pursuing my career and sporting dreams.

I am an exercise physiologist which means I use sport and exercise to teach science and the functioning of the human body and at the same time explore how the human body works and how we can get athletes to run, jump, swim and cycle faster or how we can get all people and children more physically active. I give two lectures a week and the rest of my time is devoted to me working with my research assistant and my research students.  We get to work in some really cool labs collecting data such as oxygen uptake, heart function, muscle function and blood chemistry.    My research at the moment is focused on what allows us to pace ourselves during exercise and how this could be of benefit to marathon runners and even military personal.

If there was a typical day it would probably look something like this.  Individual tutorials with my undergraduate and postgraduate students.  Give a lecture for 2 hours followed by running a laboratory practical session for an hour .  I would then catch up with student enquiries via email and other general enquiries.  I would meet with my research assistant and discuss data collection and analysis.  If I was in the lab this could be an all-day affair running from 08:00 – 21:00.