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…
Category: Running
Macaroni cheese, the perverted Jacobite and the South Glen Shiel Ridge 9
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
What’s worse? DNS or DNF.
I would have finished the Richmond Park Marathon by now. Instead, I am mooching around my flat, having not run a mile, my thoughts drifting forward to a fortnight’s time when I will be – all being well – embroiled in an attempt on the Bob Graham round. I had to pull out of today’s…
Midweek racing at the Beckenham relays
There’s something about a midweek race. There’s a certain pleasure, I feel, to finishing a day of work, then heading off, not simply to run, but to race. On my way to the Beckenham 2.6-mile relays, I mulled over the midweek races I’d taken part in: the Bugatti 10k over a couple of years in…
Cioch Mhor hill race 2012
A 10-day visit to the Scottish Highlands happened to coincide with the date of one my favourite hill races, Cioch Mhor. At least that’s what I told my wife. Organised by Highland Hill Runners, the 14km race starts at Tulloch Castle above Dingwall, before ascending to the trig pillar atop Cnoc a’Bhreacaich and then Cioch Mhor, a 482-metre pap dwarfed…
The psychology of the long-distance run
I ran 33 miles on Monday. I have never walked or ran further on a single day before. The run was three miles longer than my Winter Tanners in January, but – taking 5 hours and 20 minutes – lasted an hour longer. My transition to ultra-running hasn’t been seamless; it has required a whole…
Another Bob Graham recce: 11 hours, 13 summits, 35 miles
My body aches. It aches in a way that only two days of Bob Graham recce can induce. My quads ache. My thighs ache. Even my arms ache. But, to corrupt that hackneyed saying: 11 hours and 35 miles on the Lakeland fells will make me stronger. Apart from the inevitable ache, the consequences of…
Heights of Madness 