Ben Robinson has been a good runner for a long time but he remains as keen as ever and is continuing to set new standards.

The recently-turned 37-year-old, an England Masters and Great Britain Masters international, is in red-hot form, so much so that he has set three PBs over three separate distances since the start of the year.

And what’s more, they’ve all come since he left Bristol and West Athletic Club to join Western Tempo, the high-performance set-up whose orange vests have made such an impact since the club were established five years ago.

“Orange is treating me very well so far,” laughed Robinson, a former University of Gloucestershire student who has lived in Gloucester for the past 15 years.

“There has been a bit of a banter, ‘This is what orange does for you!’.”

Robinson joined Western Tempo on the back of an excellent 2025 after helping Bristol and West win both the UK 12-stage road relay and national cross-country titles.

Winning those titles was important to him and a great way to sign off from a club with whom he had enjoyed a long association but he’s certainly hit the ground running since joining Western Tempo in early January.

Within two weeks of making the move he had clocked his first PB, running his first sub 30 minutes 10K as he recorded a time of 29.51 when finishing third in the Speedway 10 organised by Chepstow Harriers.

Three weeks later he was at it again, this time in the 5K in the Armagh International Road Races, where he finished 52^nd in a quality field in a time of 14 minutes, 18 seconds.

That was five seconds better than his previous best and he wasn’t finished yet because last weekend he came second in the Wokingham Half Marathon in a new best time of 66 minutes, 21 seconds.

“I ended last year well, I had a good December so I know I’m in good shape,” he said.

Robinson, whose dad Matthew is a good runner, has been competing at a good level for a long time now.

“I refer to myself as a 5K or 10K guy but maybe not so much now,” he said. “On the track I’ll run anything from 800 up.

“I’ve gone as far as a half-marathon on the road and I’ve run a trails half-marathon, and although I’ve not run a marathon I feel it is imminent, maybe in the next year.”

He’s one of those runners who is just as happy to run on the road, track or cross-country and that’s not all because he’s also a canicross world champion several times over.

He’s also a British and European canicross champion several times over in a sport which sees the runner attached to a dog who is out in front and pulls the runner along, enabling him or her to go faster.

It is a sport in which Robinson’s family have enjoyed great success because his dad, who lives in Weston-super-Mare, is a world vets’ champion, while his 11-year-old daughter Amelia, and son Aaron, who is eight, have both made an impact on the world stage.

“Amelia is a past world schoolgirls’ champion and Aaron, who is a three-times British champion, has just won bronze at the world schoolboys’ championship,” Robinson said.

“We’re the most dominant family in the world in canicross.”

Both Amelia and Aaron are part of the junior set-up at Stroud Athletic Club and when Robinson spoke to The Local Answer, he was just preparing to take them to a training night.

Robinson, who is married to Kim, usually trains once a week with Western Tempo – his training partner Richard de-Camps has just joined the club from Gloucester Athletic Club – and he said: “I train with Western Tempo in Cheltenham, they are a great group.

“Richard and I are good friends and are training partners but this will be the first time that we’ve been on the same team.”