In 1907 Joe Deakin won the inaugural Herne Hill Harriers’ 10-mile cross country championship. In 2012 I won the 105th Herne Hill Harriers’ 10-mile cross country championship. The prize then and now is the same: the gigantic and heavy Dewar Shield (pictured below), presented by whisky man Sir Thomas Dewar. In 1908 Joe Deakin won…
Author: heightsofmadness
What is Alan Hinkes up to at the moment? … and other questions
Traffic – is that the right way to describe people? – to this blog arrives via a plethora of web searches. Handily, WordPress lists these terms. Many are questions: some are perfectly logical, others make me question the sanity of the human race. However, according to the web search questions, people do not want much….
Pirie 10
This impressive piece of silverware is (soon to be) in my possession. Such are the glittering rewards for running laps of muddy fields. The latest muddy fields I ran around were actually frozen ones on Farthing Down in Coulsdon. Whenever I think of Farthing Down, I remember the children’s book, The Baby and Fly Pie,…
The enduring frustration of running…
The enduring frustration of running? Its unpredictability. Some days you feel good and run bad; some days you feel bad and run good; some days you feel bad and run bad. And – on magical, rare days – you feel good and run good. I had a felt-good-ran-bad day yesterday. It was a parkrun, only…
The rough and tumble of the Surrey League
This time last week I was bathing in the glory of being able to say: ‘I actually won something.’ Much can change in a week. It is no disrespect to the Broadway Tower Marathon to say Surrey League cross-country races are running on an utterly different level. They are not as muddy, hilly or long;…
That winning feeling at the Broadway Tower Marathon
I won a race yesterday. A running race. I was the fastest. The victor. On one day, in one place, no-one could beat me. This isn’t gloating; it is savouring a moment that may not happen again. I’ve said it before on this blog, but while there is pleasure to be gained by running, the…
Broadway Tower Marathon – race preview
Mine has been a peculiar running year. Successful (so far), but peculiar nonetheless. Having never run a step beyond 26.2 miles prior to January, I started 2012 by reinventing myself as an ultra-runner. My first 30-miler – the Winter Tanners in Surrey in January – seems an age ago. Since then I have completed the…
Ward’s Stone: the problem of finding the top
I’ve been running in the hills of the Forest of Bowland for about 45 minutes. I’m nearing the highest point of these hills, Ward’s Stone. Mist has swept in. Drizzle has turned to hail. The ground is sodden, sticky, sludgy. I touch the pillar on the western summit of Ward’s Stone, then huddle behind a…
Arch to Arc: the documentary
Well, not quite a documentary. More a one-minute feature on the Arch to Arc challenge I and three others undertook in August. It included 90 miles of relay running from London to Dover, a seven-and-a-half hour row across the English Channel, and a 185-mile cycle thereafter to Paris. There is more to come, we are…
A ‘bad’ review and a right to reply
Reviews are important to writers. Although eagerly anticipated, they are feared. The views of a few – be they newspaper or magazine reviewers, or increasingly book sellers and book websites – guide the masses. Few outlets are as important as Amazon. I don’t know what percentage of my total book sales come from Amazon, but I imagine it’s a significant amount….
Back to the Fellsman
I have been back to Fellsman country: that April-time place of 61 miles of running, 13 hours of pain and pleasure, self-doubt and wonderment. I was on a bicycle this time. And rather than retracing every bump of the Fellsman horseshoe, I was simply slipping thorough the valleys and springing over the high road passes of the Yorkshire Dales….
Two out of three ain’t bad…
Having survived my altercation with the ghost of a Jacobite in Glen Shiel, I ventured east, first to Inverness, then to Moray. I had a three-day Bank Holiday plan. Day 1 – The Glen Challenge, a 10-mile trail race that forms part of the Glenurquhart Highland Gathering and Games in Drumnadrochit; Day 2 – Ben…
Heights of Madness 