I really like it when a story starts in the middle or at the end and then swings back to the start. However, it’s been done before and, since this may be my last big story of the year, I thought I’d do it differently. Rewind to a week ago, a week before the race […]

Crying at the end of a race became a tradition for me in the last couple of years, so after a blub free Hardmoors 55, I was kind of expecting Transvulcania to result in tears. I was not expecting to be brought to wobbly chin territory during the race though, and certainly not from the […]

Yesterday, I won a race. Over the past few years, this has been happening fairly regularly and quite honestly, it’s a bit weird. I sort of feel outside of myself on days like this: people are congratulating me, saying cool things about me being an inspiration and a speedy runner, but it just doesn’t feel […]

Three weeks. Not just a holiday, a late honeymoon and an adventure but three weeks of specific, Alpine preparation before the CCC. This would be awesome. We’d have done the whole course, got loads of acclimatisation in and done some extra hiking practice. I was feeling positive that this would be a good race for […]

What is it about doing a 100 mile race that makes you want to do another one immediately? After the Hardmoors 110 last year, I wanted to try something else, something that I could push myself to improve on. So many people that  love Hardmoors love the West Highland Way race, so I decided to […]

If it’s becoming a tradition for me to have one disappointing race a year, I hope it was today. After feeling so horrendous on the HM 30 last year, the rest of 2015 couldn’t have been better. So, hopefully, after dropping out of the HM 55 today, maybe the rest of 2016 is looking good! […]

This story has a happy ending. I’ll tell you that now because it starts pretty miserably, on a grey New Year’s Day… The Hardmoors Grand Slam is something that captured my interest about four years ago, when I was a wide-eyed admirer of those strange folks known as ‘ultra-runners’. Conceived in 2011 by Jon Steele, […]

There felt like quite a buzz in the lead up to this event, the Mourne Mountains over in Northern Ireland being a very new and quite unheard of place to me, NiRunning/Mourne Skyline MTR team  were hosting the last race in Skyrunning Uk series. The information and statistics confirmed this would be a tough one, with […]

After 40 miles of pushing hard over mountains, approaching yet another summit, the distinct tinkle and knocking of bells began to approach: lots of bells in fact, but I was miles away from any town where the majority of people had been congregating, greeting each runner with enthusiastic cheering.  No, this was a gentle, random […]