Running: Marathon Ultra-Marathon & Adventure

May 23, 2021

The road back (part 1): emerging from the tunnel

Well, hello! It has been a while. There has been a splash pandemic induced writer’s block, a pinch of ‘meh’, and a soupcon of what is there to actually write about? Of course if I had really put my mind to it and displayed a bit of creativity there would have been something.
May 1, 2020

Running in the time of covid-19

Lockdown –7 days - I am now working from home full-time. It is going to be about routine. I will train three times a day; morning, noon and evening. This will help structure and break up my day. Other news; the cat is delighted to have another human in the house to demand attention off.

How much toilet roll, pasta and tinned tomatoes can people stockpile?

April 11, 2020

Global Odyssey – marathon extra

As ever I was the first person to rise the morning after the my 100k, and I needed food. The highly nutritious post run supper of crisps and beer had hit the spot at the time but did not provide quality recovery sustenance. I found coffee and freshly baked bread in the kitchen which I supplemented with our supplies to make a tasty if slightly odd breakfast. Then I sat in the quiet munching away and reflecting on the previous day.

December 31, 2019

2019

As I write this on the last day of 2019 with one run to go my year’s mileage sits at 1,370 miles and my year will probably end on 1,376, or thereabouts. A lower mileage than in recent years. The last year of the decade has been one hell of a year: extreme highs and extreme lows with everything in between. Quite apart from the Global Odyssey, life’s odyssey took me on a path I had not expected to encounter for some years.
August 23, 2019

No Solace

It has been a while since I wrote. There should have been an entry for the Global Odyssey trip to North America and for the Ben Vorlich Ultra. Why the silence? Well, life has thrown a massive curve ball that has totally knocked the wind out of my sails and all my motivation with it.

December 31, 2018

What 2018 has taught me (and no I did not promise you a games room)

2018 has been the epitomised the odyssey. It has been a year of challenges both physical and mental; and there have been successes and failures. It would not be an odyssey if it was easy, and it would not be an odyssey if I didn’t learn along the way.

December 24, 2018

I am not a good runner

A friend recently declared in public that she ‘loved running; but was not very good at it’. This made me think. Define a good runner. What makes a good runner? Is it really just the domain of the elites, the club runners, the front of the pack runners, the podium placing runners?

December 16, 2018

We do not Conquer nature, it allows us to pass

Recently watching a documentary about an Everest ascent that did not go to plan I was struck by the cost of hubris. The climber’s desire and determination to be the first to summit in that season, and significantly, to be last off the summit that day despite rapidly deteriorating weather conditions was an act of sheer hubris and lack of respect for nature that almost cost him his life.

December 4, 2018

The hibernation factor

I knew there was a reason why I don’t normally line up events for January and February and why my mileage goes down over the winter. It’s the I just want to rest on my summer laurels, kick back, reduce the mileage and lie about in the warmth and get fat factor. This bear just wants to coorie in and hibernate.

November 1, 2018

The Desert Strikes Back

I must be honest and say that this blog entry is tinged with disappointment and frustration at my second failure to complete the African stage of the Global Odyssey, but I am entirely comfortable with my decision to abandon forty-five kilometres into the 100k Ultra Mirage el Djerid event.

September 19, 2018

The Global Odyssey Gobi 100

An epic run with a Mongolian mud spa treatment thrown in for free.

Where do I start? This stage of the Global Odyssey 100 was the perfect example of what the Global Odyssey is about: remote, extreme, challenging, wild, beautiful and awe inspiring. One hundred kilometres over foothills, through gorges, over desert plains in rain and sunshine with temperatures ranging from fifteen to thirty-one degrees, from dawn to night.