In April 2017, John Kelly became the fifteenth person to complete the Barkley Marathons. I remember watching him approach the yellow gate that marks the finish, a torn plastic bag draped around his torso offering meagre protection against the roughness of this unforgiving corner of Tennessee. But that wasn’t the story. In the same race,…
Category: Fell running
On the hills there is only one legal currency: FREEDOM
The year is 1992. John Major is the Prime Minister, Wayne’s World is released, Microsoft is at 3.1 stage. Boff Whalley is a guitarist in the alternative band Chumbawumba – the group’s best known song, Tubthumping won’t be released for another five years – and a fell runner in the north of England. He is…
What Deirdrie (and her friends) teach us about hill running
Three years ago today, on another winter solstice, I was running on Dun Rig, the highest point of a moorland horseshoe above Peebles. The summit was buried in swirling mist, cuffed by an enraged wind. Meagrely dressed, I rapidly became very cold. Disorientated and shaking on unfamiliar hills, I looked around anxiously, peering into the…
365 Days of Hill Running Wisdom – May
Day 121: ‘Invincible.’ In a word, Adrian Belton explains how he felt during the 29 days he ran the Paddy Buckley, Ramsay’s Round and the Bob Graham, two of which were records. Day 122: Ewan Paterson on hill running: ‘It gives me meaning, bringing something to my life that nothing else does – very much…
Beautiful Madness
In a life that stretches to more than 13,000 days, I can boil my existence down to five truly momentous days. The day I got I married. The day my first daughter was born. The day my second daughter was born. The day I completed the Bob Graham Round. The day I completed Ramsay’s Round….
365 days of hill running wisdom: April
Day 91: ‘Every time you go for a run, take a stone from the top of Scald Law and put it on Carnethy. We only need 3 metres off one and 3 metres added to the other if that, taking into account glacial rebound and remeasurement by the OS. We can do it!’ New identity…
365 Days of Hill Running Wisdom – March
Day 61: An insight into the High Peak Marathon: ‘The descent off Lose Hill was something to behold – a frantic, impossibly slippy, muddy, vertical drop. Most logical humans would take their time to pick a good footing and a safe line off such a death trap – not so fell runners.’ Day 62: The…
365 days of hill running – the first week
I am posting a daily quote in 2018, celebrating the brilliance, toughness and eccentricity of hill and fell running. The messages are posted each morning on Twitter at @MuirJonny. These are the quotes from the first week. Day 1: A rousing start to 2018 from @boffwhalley: ‘I found my feet again, tripping easily across loose…
What to read when you read about hill running
WHAT TO READ WHEN YOU READ ABOUT HILL RUNNING Writing and running are activities connected by extended metaphor: while running is prose, hill (or fell) running is poetry. This sport, therefore, demands writing of the highest ilk. In the course of research for my own book on hill running, The Mountains Are Calling, I have…
Running in the boot marks of Wainwright
‘The face of Place Fell overlooking Patterdale is unremittingly and uncompromisingly steep,’ wrote Alfred Wainwright in his pictorial guide to the Far Eastern Fells of the Lake District. Wainwright recommends any ascent of the 657-metre peak that rises above Ullswater but this. And that is where I find myself, trudging upwards on pathless mountainside, the…
Why we go to the hills… and how to join us
Some years ago I was running in the Eastern Fells of the Lake District. As I descended a mountain called High Street, I passed a walker. He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ he shouted incredulously into the breeze. I smiled. Encumbered by boots and bag, I wondered the same: How…
The unpredictable art of running blogging
I have been blogging for some years. I was a writer and journalist first. My original purpose was to support the publication of my first book, Heights of Madness, and my second and third books thereafter. Over time, heightsofmadness.com graduated into a running blog – a blog that last week pleasingly surpassed 50,000 visits. Writing…
Heights of Madness 