Cycling 70 miles to Swindon - falling without style

London to Paris is fast approaching and free weekends disappearing so I thought I'd make a concerted effort at a long ride last weekend and find somewhere 70-odd miles away and get on the bike. I originally planned to go out and back with an overnight stop and therein found the first battle. It's so much easier to plan runs! But finding a quiet route that you can take a road bike on I have so far …

New Nutrition - Fori free-range meat bars

Right folks, let's talk about the second most favourite subject for runners after running - eating. Before I ran my frst ultra and was all about the road marathon, all I packed for the race were 3 SIS gels, stuffed into the tiny key pocket in the shorts. Half the benefit was the mental boost of getting rid of one every 7-8 miles; helping break up the race. The unfortunate side effect was that if y…

MarathonTalk Run Camp 2017

This was Tom and Martin's fourth MarathonTalk run camp down in the New Forest and my second. I was really looking forward to it after last year. I hardly ever do this sort of thing - the only other one I can remember going to in fact was years ago with Runners World - but last year's was excellent and this one looked even more full of events.It's hosted by the curiously-named Sandy Balls - which n…

Auld Lang Syne Fell Race 2016

One of my must-dos, this. You have to get in quick - it's postal application only and there are only 400 places up for grabs.I love it because it's a fantastic way to see out the old year. A 10.8km fell race through Penistone Country Park in Haworth, W. Yorks which includes a couple of river crossings and a few hundred metres of climbing over what for the mostpart is little better than swamp. You …

Ultra Trail Cape Town 100km - 10th Dec 2016

My first visit to Cape Town was back in 2013 - a few days of doing as little as possible before Comrades in Durban. As it was June, it was Winter in the Southern Hemisphere and out of season (a very cheap time to visit!) so you can't rely on the weather helping you out. But I got pretty lucky; every morning my fellow hotel resident couple would forlornly tell me the Robben Island Ferry had been ca…

Aravaipa Black Canyon 100km, Arizona - 13th February 2016

This was to be an epic year of ultras - I had 10 booked in at the start of 2016. Far too many, especially as I had the 4-race Centurion 50-mile grand slam nestling uncomfortably close to Lavaredo and The Cape Town 100k.  I'm sat on the plane to the latter as I write this, with 2016's plans in the kind of disarray that an unattended puppy is liable to leave your newspaper.  My amazing ultra-runni…

My Inconvenient Truth

Back in 1991, when I was a student in Bradford living in the kind of squalor that would provoke national outcry these days (all part of the fun) I can't say I gave a single solitary toss about the environment. I wasn't a man-made climate change denier or anything like that, it's just that the issue had yet to go mainstream and I was completely unaware of it.  It's possible that my own immediate e…

Thinking about past journeys and future adventures

Running the WorldNow I've built a fancy dan mapping thingummy for the blog I thought it would be kind of fun to pin all the longer races on the CV around the world and see what insights emerged. There's nothing much better or simpler than staring at a World map to start planing future adventures.So anyway, it started off fun, became less fun then was reduced to a catatonic data-entry exercise…

Cycling from London to Brighton on a whim and a hybrid

In a total departure from what usually fills my weekends I've signed up for Sophie Radcliffe's cycle ride from London to Paris in 24hrs next year.  There's something about that particular challenge that instantly grabbed me and I've long since learned it's best (and most fulfilling) to just go with whoever in your head is actually at the controls when it comes to stuff like this.I think I'm…

The 2016 Northumberland Coastal

There are a couple of races that are permanent fixtures on my calendar each year.  Assuming, that is, I don't oversleep and miss them - they both go like hot cakes among people who have only just discovered cake, and could do with a bit of warming up. One's the Auld Lang Syne fell race in Haworth and the other is this gem - the Northumberland Coastal from Beadnell to Almnouth on the beautiful Nor…