What can one expect of a day that commences with the consumption of a can of lukewarm macaroni cheese, eaten with a Debenhams gift card? Standing in an empty layby near the Cluanie Inn, I gazed skywards at the mist-covered South Glen Shiel ridge. The forecast was for this theme to continue: mist and intermittent…
Author: heightsofmadness
Knoydart 3
‘Land of the giants,’ a running friend remarked when I announced I was Knoydart-bound. Knoydart is a wild, west coast peninsula suffused in the mythology of the outdoors: a place of extremes, a place of dreams. The Rough Bounds – as Knoydart is also known – have also been over-described as Scotland’s ‘last wilderness; that…
Marble Arch to Arc de Triomphe – 300 miles of running, rowing and cycling
Party poopers. That’s the French. We had run 90 miles in relay from Marble Arch in Central London to Dover; we had rowed 26 painful miles across a lumpy, brown English Channel; we had cycled 185 miles from Calais to the Arc de Triomphe in the chaotic heart of Paris. After cycling a loop around…
London to Paris: running, rowing and cycling – please sponsor!
PLEASE SPONSOR TEAM ARCH TO ARC HERE Remember comedian John Bishop crossing the English Channel in a rowing boat to raise money for Sport Relief? Bishop raised more than £3million for charity in his so-called ‘week of hell’. He cycled from Paris to Calais and rowed the Dover Strait before running three marathons in three days to reach…
The hardiness of the long-distance rower
I am well-acquainted with the loneliness of the long-distance runner; now I understand a little of the hardiness of the long-distance rower. It was on the second of two four-hour stints yesterday that the magnitude of rowing the 20-odd miles of the Dover Strait became glaringly apparent. We were rowing across the waters of Langstone Harbour on England’s…
Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon 2012
Having given mountain marathons a wide berth for years, I finally ran my first – the Saunders Lakeland – over the weekend. My running partner, Marc, and I, ran for 11 hours, 18 minutes, covered at least 28 miles and ascended and descended some 2500 metres. In those 11-plus hours we crossed a mere two…
Rowing the English Channel: a (tricky) introduction
I have long admired the graceful fluency of rowing that masks the reality of the brute force being applied. This fluency is more apparent, naturally, the more there are in a boat, like in the Boat Race when eight men pull in perfect, beautiful symmetry. We are a team of four – although possibly swelling…
Bob Graham blues?
Bob Graham blues? Is there such a thing? If there is, I think I have developed a bout. I feel rather empty; my Bob Graham Round, successfully completed a fortnight ago, has left a mental and physical void yet to be filled by other distractions. I am running my first mountain marathon, the Saunders, in…
Rowing the English Channel
The Arch2Arc Challenge 2012 – London to Paris on foot, by rowing boat and by bicycle in four days. The dust on my successful Bob Graham Round has scarcely settled and thoughts of the Paddy Buckley or Ramsay’s Round swirl around my head, but I must turn my attention from running to something more alien:…
Bob Graham Round – SUCCESS!
Moot Hall, Keswick, 1am. We were off, darting through a ginnel, away from town, destined for the invisible summit of Skiddaw. No fanfare, no cheering crowds, no fuss. Only a handful of late-night revellers enjoying the dying embers of a Jubilee night-out. Low-key, yes, but as the well-worn proverb goes: from humble beginnings come great…
Bob Graham – 52 hours and counting
My Bob Graham Round attempt is almost upon me. In around 52 hours, at 1am on Sunday, I will set off from Moot Hall in Keswick, before proceeding up the moonlit (hopefully) slopes of Skiddaw. And thereafter? Some 60-plus miles, 42 summits, 27,000ft of ascent and descent, returning to Keswick by dusk that evening. The prospect is tremendously exciting….
Shedding demons courtesy of the Fellsman
Close to three weeks ago, I felt what I took to be my left Achilles tweak at an evening race at Beckenham. I thought little of it. Running the next night, the Achilles became increasingly sore. It was one of those runs that, in hindsight, I simply shouldn’t have done. An inexplicable, wholly avoidable error of judgement. I took the…
Heights of Madness 