About me - Blah blah blah.

 

You may have guessed that I quite like running and I also like banging on about it. Not sure in what order. My other hobbies include eating lots and drinking more than I should so it's probably a good job I run a bit.

It all started when I found out about a race called Badwater. This was in 2006 sometime when I was training for a marathon. I only had a vague awareness of people running longer distances than "The Marathon" and thought this was silly, but when I found out about a race of 135 miles, uphill and through the hottest place on Earth in the summer my running goals changed. If someone else can do such a thing then so can I.

I ran my first ultra soon after, in Jan 2007. The 45 miles from Tring to Town and loved it. At the time this was all part of a "plan" to do Badwater within 5 years but along the way my priorities changed again. The more and more ultras I did the more I came to realise that long distance running is more of a lifestyle than a set of targets. In May 2008 I completed the Grand Union Canal Run which was possibly the race of my life, I stepped up from 50 odd miles to 145 without much fuss at all. I then realised that I really could do this kind of thing. At the end of my first Spartathlon. I am in real pain there :(

I have completed some others too. The 300k "Run the Moose" 6 day ultra through some spectacular but brutally rocky terrain in Canada, The Marathon Des Sables (Obviously), The GUCR again, the Spartathlon in 2009 and 2010 (in my opinion the hardest race I have done so far) and in summer last year I flew out to the desert and put Badwater to bed. I was amazing to finish something I had started 4 years before but it by no means meant the end of anything.

I now enjoy just being part of an ever growing ultra running scene in the UK. Weekends become a social day where you can meet up with friends and enjoy miles and miles of the great outdoors. Every week there are more people running ultras for the first time, more races being planned and more people entering. It is a priveledge to be part of that. I like to run in more exotic locations too but despite not having big mountains, harsh deserts, huge jungles or arctic tundra the UK does have some spectacular and history rich coastline, mountains, national trails and forests to run in. I am also partial to a bit of canal.

So without much idea of "where to go from here" when I completed Badwater I realised that I quite like just being "here" and enjoying this kind of thing every week.

But just to give me something else to bang on about I signed up to the Los Angeles to New York Race this summer. 3220 miles in 70 days (thats 45 a day average). In all honesty the very thought of it scares the crap out of me. If I could go back four years to talk to myself at the start line of my first ever 45 miler and tell him you'll be running this distance every day for two and a half months I wonder what he would say?

Hope you enjoy the blog.