Imagine running in the same race every year for a decade. Imagine, every time that race weekend comes around, you are fit enough, well enough and lucky enough, to not only be competitive, but to win – to win that race for 10 consecutive years. Now imagine that race was Ben Nevis, the race to…
Tag: Ben Nevis Race
‘I have a son out in the big wide world’
Last month I interviewed Finlay Wild for the Autumn edition of Fellrunner, the magazine of the Fell Runners Association. Although it has not been published, this is not meant to be a spoiler. The interview preceded the Ben Nevis Race. Finlay, on the day before his 35th birthday, was victorious. In fact, he has won…
The race should be on the fells, not the web
Entry for the Ben Nevis Race opened on Sunday. Runners were told they had three days, until midday on Wednesday, to add their name to a pre-selection ballot. Hundreds signed up, enticed by the increased hype around this year’s race, partly due to its selection as a British championship event. I was among them. I…
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….
Ben Nevis Race 2010
Eroded and overcrowded it may be, but I’ve grown fond of Ben Nevis. It was the first Munro I climbed, as a brief walking interlude while cycling between John O’ Groats and Lands End on a snowy May day in 2003. I climbed it with my girlfriend, now fiancée, two years later, with swirling mist obscuring any…
An electrifying day on the Malverns, literally
It is the last thing a runner needs, particularly at the end of a hard, long training session: to be electrocuted. I was coming off End Hill at the northern extent of the Malvern Hills when I stepped over a low fence. My T-shirt, which was hanging from my shorts, must have brushed the wire, for a split second later…
Training for the Ben Nevis race…
… in central London. Not easy, not easy at all. Still, I’m trying to do the best I can with what is at my disposal. The absence of hills of any great height or length – you would have thought there could be at least one Munro, even a rubbish one, in London – means I…
Heights of Madness 