Rob Green has been for a run every day since November 2020.

And we’re not talking about a jog around the garden or a quick dash down to the end of the road and back, we’re talking a proper run which some days can be as much as 14 miles.

It’s obviously doing the 40-year-old a lot of good too, because he’s just run the recent Cheltenham Half Marathon in one hour, 12 minutes, 19 seconds, which saw him finish sixth in the 1,500-plus field.

And yet Green does not regard himself as a runner.

“I am a triathlete,” he told The Local Answer, before adding with a laugh, “if you’ll pardon the pun, it’s become a bit of a running joke.”

Indeed it has because he’s been a member of top Cheltenham running club CLC Striders for more than 18 months and enjoyed a lot of success as a runner, but when you look at his CV it’s easy to see why he considers himself a triathlete first and foremost.

For a start he’s British age group champion for the sprint triathlon, a title he won in Cardiff in mid-summer, and a few weeks later he followed that up by finishing fourth in the European championships in Munich.

That’s impressive going, of course, and means he is a standout at swimming and cycling as well as running for the 40-44 age group.

Initially, swimming was very much his sport.

“I was always a swimmer, I used to swim for Swindon Dolphin when I was growing up,” said Green, who moved to Cheltenham 10 years ago. “Back then my stroke was breaststroke. They are a good club and the coach was Terry Davies, the father of Olympic swimmer Sharron.”

Green was an active child and as he got older he started to do quite a bit of mountain biking.

It was just a hobby but, as you may imagine, it was something he did at full tilt and it was to stand him in very good stead when he was presented with an unexpected opportunity in 2008, an opportunity that was to mark the beginning of his triathlon journey.

Green takes up the story.

“My brother Alex, who played semi-professional football, had entered the London Triathlon but just before the event he tore the ACL ligament in his knee," he said.

“I took his place – I used his name – and I came ninth in the Open category in two hours 14 or 15. I’d done zero training. To this day my brother has never beaten that time!”

Clearly there was a triathlete in the making but as so often happens in sport, a huge high is followed by a desperate low and for Green that desperate low was a serious injury that would have ended the career of many.

“I was attempting to do a jump on my mountain bike off a table top in the Forest of Dean,” he explained. “It was quite a bad accident, I tore all three ligaments in my right shoulder.”

Two surgeries and eight months later he was told that he would never again have full use of the shoulder and that he would never again be able to swim.

But far from being downhearted that simply spurred him on.

“I was swimming even when I had the metalwork in my shoulder,” said Green, “and after my first son Theo was born 10 years ago I got into road biking.”

And he certainly took to the cycling in a big way.

“I started doing bigger and bigger rides,” he said. “I was doing 145-mile rides across the Brecon Beacons with my mate Adam Halliwell.”

Another friend, Ross Greening, suggested that Green, who lives in Benhall, join Cheltenham Triathlon Club and he’s been a member now for the past six or seven years.

But while he could obviously swim and cycle, it was clear Green needed to work on his running.

And it’s here that he had a bit of good fortune.

“There were a couple of handy runners in the road where I live,” Green said. “Will Ferguson is my next door neighbour and he’s done a two hour, 30 marathon. I consider him my running coach, he’s a member of CLC Striders and it’s through him that I joined the club.”

Green joined along with another running mate, Tom Burgess, and last season they ran for their new club in the always competitive Birmingham Cross-Country League.

And such has been the improvement in Green’s running that he now considers it to be the strongest of his three disciplines “by a long way”, something that is due in part to the various lockdowns of the past couple of years.

“During Covid the swimming pools were shut so instead I started to run daily,” he said. “Come this November I will not have missed a single day of running. I will run three or four miles and anything up to 14, on the odd day I’ll run 22. I was averaging 75 miles a week during Covid.”

All that hard work came to fruition at the aforementioned British Championships when he ran 15 minutes, 10 seconds in the 5K.

He completed the event in one hour, one minute; some 90 seconds ahead of his nearest age group rival, so although his running time was very good, his swimming and cycling times were pretty useful too!

So which discipline does he enjoy the most?

“That’s a good question, I enjoy all three,” he said. “I think if I just did one I might get a bit bored. All three are interesting. For a while I might concentrate on the running, then the biking and then rotate to the swimming.

“Training at the Lido in the summer is fantastic, you can’t beat it, I still love my swimming. I enjoy running and getting on my bike and going out into the Cotswolds, it’s beautiful.”

And what makes it all the more enjoyable is that his two boys, Theo and six-year-old Christopher, are clearly following in dad’s footsteps.

“We do Parkrun at Pittville and KGV,” said Green, “and they’re both keen swimmers. Theo swims for Cheltenham Phoenix Aquatics Club and he’s represented Gloucestershire in the primary schools’ national cross-country races.

“He enjoys Tri in the Park and Christopher is really keen too, he’s already got his own tri suit!”

And while Green, who works in IT, is obviously delighted that his two boys are so keen on the sport, it’s helping him too because their parkruns fit in very nicely with his regular Saturday morning routine.

“On a typical Saturday morning, I’ll run two-and-a-half miles to the Lido, swim for an hour, then run to the parkrun and run 5K with the boys before running home,” he said.

And there’s no lie-in on a Sunday either.

“I go for for a 12-mile run over Leckhampton Hill with Will [Ferguson] and Tom [Burgess],” he laughed. “Our Sunday Leckhampton Hill runs have grown recently with a couple of others who sometimes join us – Joe Willgoss and Rob Barnett.”

Wednesday evenings are pretty hectic, too, because he’ll run to Honeybourne for half a session with CLC Striders at 6.30pm, before running to the Prince of Wales Stadium for a full session with Cheltenham Triathlon Club from 7-8pm.

That’s followed by another hour-long session with Striders at the same venue before then running home, having completed a total of some 22 miles!

And quite apart from the fitness and obvious enjoyment that Green derives from his sport, his success gives him the chance to travel too.

His British Championships win has given him automatic entry into next year’s world championships in Hamburg – the sprint triathlon is a 750 metres swim, 20K bike and 5K run – and he will again compete in the European championships.

Green, who is married to Allayne, has great memories of this year’s European championships in Munich.

“Finishing fourth, I’ll take that obviously,” he said. “It was amazing to represent Great Britain and just to be part of it. We ran round the Olympic Stadium, it’s an amazing stadium, it was absolutely buzzing. It was the largest event held in Germany since the 1972 Olympics.”

Next year looks certain to be another stellar year for Green.

“It’s funny,” he said, “I always thought I’d had quite a boring life but talking like this makes me realise I haven’t at all.”

He most certainly hasn’t!