Picking wild blackberries in fresh, crisp, Autumn air is one of my favourite memories from childhood. There’s nothing quite like gathering these juicy, slightly sharp berries and then cooking them into a home-made treat!

Start your weekend here, with a round-up of some of the best athletics, running and fitness-related stories from the past seven days.

Junk miles, say those who believe in such things, are those miles with no specific training purpose, which therefore serve only to add to your fatigue. The name, of course, implies far worse - miles that, like the brightly coloured wrappers at the supermarket checkout, should be avoided at all costs for the good of your health.

Athletics competitions are slowly returning as we all adjust to the ‘new normal’. And if you thought the world’s top athletes might need a few warm-up competitions to get into their stride…no way!

To keep the Tokyo 2020 fire burning in our hearts for one more year, I’m cooking up one of my all-time favourite Japanese dishes: kara age

In the absence of serious races, now's the perfect time to think a bit more left field and consider targeting a more fun food-based challenge instead.

Cooking, like running and coaching, is a lifelong learning process. However good you become, there is always more you can learn. There is no limit to how far you can master your craft. With cooking, I’ve tried over the years to move away from relying on recipes, and instead tried to work with what I know about ingredients to bring out the best in them and be creative.

The feats of the great athletes are endlessly inspiring, whether it's superhumanly fast times or tales of the sort of commitment to training that boggle the mind.