Prologue: earlier this summer….. Having struggled with a knee injury since early spring I had made a tentative comeback to (some) running. After a few very long hikes which went well I put myself through the Couch to 5k programme in June/July, and managed to build up to 10k runs. Read more
Reacquainting myself with the Pennine Way My recent little backpacking trip along the Dales Way gave me a taste for more. I might as well get good use out of my new tent! I quickly decided that my next project could be a re-recce of parts of the Pennine Way Read more
The Dales Way As I start to write this post (mid June) I have just started to run again, and am currently in week 3 of a self-prescribed Couch to 5K programme, rebuilding my running fitness. But I spent more than 3 months not running due to a knee problem Read more
Lady Anne’s Way (LAW) is a way-marked long distance walking trail from Skipton in North Yorkshire to Penrith in Cumbria. Lady Anne Clifford was born in 1589 in Skipton Castle. After her father, George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, died in 1605, as the only surviving child she spent much Read more
The Winter Downs 100 by Centurion Running is a 100 mile continuous trail race with 10,000 feet of elevation and a 35 hour cut off. The route starts at Amberley Museum (West Sussex) on the South Downs Way and runs point to point, following the South Downs Way in a westerly direction, turning Read more
A “backyard ultra” is a Last Person Standing ultra marathon format where runners complete a 4.167-mile loop (‘yard’) every hour, on the hour, until only one runner remains. The winner is the last runner to complete a lap, with all others having either stopped, or failed to finish a lap Read more
A change is as good as a rest they say, and I think that applies to ultra running too. In the last two years I have spent a lot of time on the Pennine Way, the Coast to Coast, and the Cleveland Way. I have also done a couple of Read more
The adjective ‘iconic’ can be overused. But I think the Hardmoors 110 (miles) race probably deserves this title. With 2025 staging its 18th edition, it started in 2008 as a small race with just 17 finishers. Ultra running was still very much a niche pursuit within the running community. As Read more
When a plan comes together… The Northern Traverse is a roughly 300 km (185 miles) route across the North of England from St Bees on the west coast to Robin Hood’s Bay on the east coast, organised by Ourea Events. The route can broadly be broken into four sections, the Read more
Over the last 12 months I have spent a lot of time on the Pennine Way, either recceing the route or ‘racing’. I ran the Spine Challenger South in June and the Spine Challenger North (minus the last 7 miles 😥) in January. I basically covered the whole of the Read more