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
What came before I started running in 2007 but did not run my first marathon until 2015. My journey into ultra running started cautiously with a 28 mile local race in September 2021. I built up the distances over the next 12 months and a year later I ran the Read more
A round up of the final month of 2024 where I had three events on three stormy days with yellow weather warnings: the Punk Panther Christmas Cracker in a named storm (Darragh) on the 7th, a ‘Run like a Haggis’ navigation course on a ‘standard windy day’ on the 15th, Read more
SwissPeaks Trail organise races with a range of distances, from a half-marathon all the way up to an unbelievable 660k. Their main race week is always the week after UTMB, and whilst the races start in different places depending on the distance, they all finish in Le Bouveret on the Read more
Yes, it was warm and there was a lot of ‘up’. Having spent UTMB week in the Chamonix Valley in 2023, when I ran the CCC, I was keen to return to this week long ‘festival’, which is seen by many as the apex of the annual trail running calendar. Read more
Until I recced and ran the Montane Cheviot Goat last year I had never spent any time in the Cheviot hills, but in a short space of time I have come to really enjoy running in this beautiful and very remote area. With limited road access into the hills and Read more
Up and down for 100 km through Italy, Switzerland and France I travelled to the Chamonix Valley to run the CCC race (named after the towns at the start, middle and finish: Courmayeur, Champex, Chamonix), 100km with 6156m ascent . Sometimes called the ‘little sister of the UTMB’, the CCC Read more
Some thoughts about training High time to update my blog, in particular with reference to the 2 race entry ballots I wrote about in a previous post. On January 1, whilst I was running through the mud on the North Leeds Greenway Ultra, the email arrived to say I had Read more
My race calendar for 2023 is taking shape, there are some definite dates in there with races entered, but two big question marks remain and I’m waiting with bated breath for ballot results coming my way on January 1st and 10th respectively. The spring is ‘sorted’. The main event will Read more
Looking back at a fantastic year It was my intention to open this blog with the first race of 2023 but I am eager to make a start with this new project 😊. As 2022 is rapidly drawing to a close it would be nice to review some of my Read more