7th July 2018. 14:05:13 hours. I can still remember the elated feeling, glancing at my watch on the way out of Carey Burn and realising I was almost bang on target. After over three and a half hours of racing in the sweltering sun I was within thirteen seconds of my pre-race goal. It wasn’t the first time I’d been on target in a big race, but it was the first time it owed as much to a spreadsheet as to training. It was the Chevy Chase last year and my first attempt at making data work for me in a race. Most fell races follow a simple format; you run to one or more checkpoints, in order, before the cut-off times. If you ignore the fact checkpoints are often on hill/mountain summits, you could even consider it fun. What racing provides you with, as well as dull and persistent pain in... View Article
On Sunday morning, at about 9:59, I’ll take a moment to remember JFK. It’s not his birthday or the anniversary of his assassination or anything like that; it’s the start of the Edinburgh Marathon. Toe-ing the line, as close to the front of my pen as I can be, I’ll invariably think of his 1962 speech at Rice University. And no, contrary to what recent performances suggest, I’m not old enough to have heard it live. Addressing the American people, he spoke about the need to do things that test our abilities and take all our energies and skills. He spoke, essentially, about doing hard things. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge... View Article
Well, I thought, eyeing the other patients in accident and emergency, that escalated quickly. One day I’d been entering my first relays with the club and relieved to find I’ve not lost all my pace, the next I’d noticed a mild discolouration on my calf, and then the next I somehow end up sat in A&E wondering how I got there. Marathon training has been tough this time out. I’ve been fighting a battle to keep my calves in vaguely usable condition. They’ve been bad but not too bad, painful but not too painful: I can always push through, and I figure that learning to push through pain is going to help in those last six miles. For the past few weeks things seemed to be improving. I had went from signing up just to improve fitness to entering that hazy, golden, stage of training where you start to believe... View Article
I love London Marathon weekend, it’s probably the only time of the year when the nation turns its eyes to a sport I love. The last three years I’ve been running it — London was my first ever running event of any distance and it holds a special place in my heart. My biggest disappointments performance wise have came there, accompanied by some of the most wonderful feelings. I’ll never forget that first time I turned onto The Mall, in agony I’d not thought possible, and dropped my head and started to trudge. A random stranger clapped a hand on my back and, with more belief in me than I had in myself, told me I could run that last 400 yards with him. By 2017 I’d started running a lot more and I’d trained specifically for my goal of 3:30. My training runs had seemed perfect to me and... View Article
