Travel

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.
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.

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.

September 3, 2018

Camels, Eagles and Gobi Onions – Ulaanbaatar to Dalanzhadgad

Roadtrip! After knocking a few ideas and plans back and forth we decided that the Global Odyssey 100 Gobi expedition should start with an eight-hundred-kilometre, two day road trip from Ulaanbaatar to the capital of the Gobi Dalanzhadgad, with an overnight stop at Mandalgovi – middle Gobi. Time to sit back, relax and get into the zone. What can I say: it was epic.

April 2, 2018

The Namibian Global Odyssey 100k

If you're seeing things running through your head Who you gonna call?Sandbaggers!

There I was dreaming about those remote, extreme, beautiful, exquisitely painful 100ks that you have set yourself the challenge of doing for the Global Odyssey 100. Antarctica, no problem: done. Europe, no problem: done. Africa; wait a minute, there are not that many one-day 100k events on the African continent and the ones I found just did not seem to whet my appetite. There was something missing, a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’. Do I settle?