Tag Archive: Fell and trail running
The plan was simple really. Have a week’s rest after Lavaredo, take that nicely worked on fitness into ten days of training in Chamonix, then come home and have a bit of fun at Maverick Race’s event in the Chilterns. The medium route (22km) looked just right for a runnable blast around the English country side and I was fairly confident in my ability to get round it fast. Confident, that was, until I got ill in Chamonix. I spent most of the trip in my bedroom, or taking short easy walks. Everyday I saw La Jonction but didn’t get to run up it, gazed along the valley towards Croix de Fer but the day I was feeling well enough to run never came. On the last day I managed a short trot along Petit Balcon Sud, a delight as ever but far less than I’d had planned. Back home... View Article
Ultra Trail Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur – 100M race report For a good few hours on Friday night, I though it was on. I felt invincible, blinded by adrenaline, pushing myself back up through the field. It’d been a rotten start. I felt fatigued and under the weather from the get go. I decided to start near the back and take things easy, knowing I should be able to make up places later on. The first section is a short climb on a fire road followed by a trail with switchbacks to get you down into Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée, where local school children formed a scream tunnel of outstretched arms that echoed, “allez, allez, allez”. From there it’s straight into a 1400m climb up to Refuge de Rabuons. The early afternoon heat was oppressive and the climb seemed to go on for days. I took a good long stop at the aid... View Article
It all started with an invite to Jane’s birthday party. She moved to Switzerland, seemingly 50% for the skiing and 50% so she could send photos of mountains home to taunt the rest of us. So her party happens to be in the shadow of Mont Blanc: bit of a long way if we’re honest but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for friendship. I’m benevolent like that. I start to look at flights and wonder if it wouldn’t be best to combine the trip with a little running. One thing leads to another, It’s UTMB week after the party and Chamonix starts to whisper my name. Could I really fly home only to sit in front of my laptop dot watching races and wishing I was there? In spite of my conflicting feelings about their influence in the sport, every year it feels like everyone is at UTMB.... View Article
There was a beautiful dissatisfaction to every breath as I pushed my way up to Passo del Monte Moro, the high point of MEHT. I was breathing heavily and the air was crisp, clean and scented with pine trees – but at sea-level the air is 21% oxygen, at the pass that drops to about 14.5%. It’s not extreme altitude, but my lungs sure knew about it. I’ve been following a training plan and have had weeks of building up again following the Bob Graham effort. Less overall volume but more quality, with some cracking sessions. The plan said to try to find a race that would take six hours and be steep and technical: Monterosa Eat Himalayan Trail Sky packs a lot into it’s 38km, with 3100m of elevation gain and a mammoth ascent that’s dwarfed only by the even bigger descent. Perfect. My strategy was to keep the... View Article
I definitely said to Sarah, as I trudged dejectedly into Wasdale, refusing to believe the profuse encouragement that said I could do it, “here’s Fiora, she’ll let me quit”. With the benefit of hindsight, I’m not sure how I reached that conclusion. Maybe I was hallucinating and thought I saw someone who’d let me walk away. That’s not what I got. As we walked to the gate of the car park, she looked me dead in the tear filled eyes and said, “okay, when you go through this gate you’re on leg four. We’ve made you some of that whiskey tea, then you’re going up the next hill.” I was not impressed. None of my support crew would listen when I explained I was quitting. I was being spoon fed porridge. My shoes were changed. I went to the loo and stared down a long drop realising my options were... View Article
There’s a scene in Air, the movie about the birth of the Air Jordan brand, where Matt Damon, thinking he’s failed, phones his friend. “Thank you for believing in me,” he says. Both Miguel de Montaigne and C.S Lewis have written more eloquently than I could on friendship but neither of them, to my knowledge, ever attempted the Bob Graham Round. I’d venture, therefore, that those of us who have may have something to add. I’m sure Miguel would’ve had some flare on the alpine trails and Clive would’ve been a menace around Oxford uni’s cinder track, but the Bob wasn’t on their list and that’s a shame because they missed out on the selfless fellowship it provides. Perhaps the most moving part of attempting the Bob Graham Round is descending on Keswick with a small army of supporters, knowing that for the next 24 hours each one will do... View Article
I was washing pots when it happened. A good bit of craic round a campsite sink. Them telling me how tired they were, me encouraging them that there wasn’t far to go. And so they asked me whether I’d done it before. I hesitated a moment before telling them I’d done most of it, but didn’t finish. They asked where I stopped and, on hearing Kinlochleven, looked at me with something approaching pity. “Why would you stop with only one day left? Were you injured? In too much pain?” The whole adventure flashed before my eyes. The dusky run to Drymen, Loch Lomond by moonlight, the long slog across Rannoch Moor and the struggle over the Devil’s Staircase. The seemingly infinite sense of possibility. Milngavie to Kinlochleven in one spontaneous run, rinsing out my body in the pursuit of a twenty-four hour completion. I shrugged and gave a wan smile.... View Article
October 14, 2022,
by Pete
“The earth,” wrote Antoine de Saint Exupéry in his classic fell running memoir, Wind, Sand and Stars, “teaches us more about ourselves than all the books in the world, because it is resistant to us. Self-discovery comes when man measures himself against an obstacle.” Okay, so maybe the book was about flying not fell running, but the sentiment fits. The Langdale Horseshoe is a classic fell race; runner against a collection of all that the Lakeland fells can throw against them. It’s got everything from scrambling to fast runnable sections, river crossings to waist deep bogs. And it’s ran in October, because fell runners are daft in the head. Why go into the mountains on a nice day when you could go up in whatever Autumn is throwing at you? Last time I ran this race I was recovering from flu and my body just didn’t want to go. It’s... View Article
September 22, 2022,
by Pete
About once a year or so, I conduct a highly scientific experiment: which is stronger, my body or granite? I never plan when this experiment is going to happen but I know immediately when it does. 4km into the Ring of Steall last weekend, granite extended its lead to three nil. I’m hoping it’s a best of three kind of competition and we can call it quits now. I’d taken my running poles moments earlier to help push up Sgurr an Iubhair but they’d spent most of their time clutched redundantly in one hand while I navigated bogs and stone. I got my toe on the edge of a big rock and then, without hands to pull-up, I slipped off it and my shin bounced down the granite edge. A hand steadied my rear. A marshal quipped that the person behind and I were now an item. I just wondered... View Article
There’s a saying, often attributed to Disraeli, that there’s three types of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics. I can’t tell you if Disraeli ever said such a thing, but I can tell you it’s been true in my running. After being frustrated on my Bob Graham attempt in May, I wasted no time getting running again. I was back out within a couple of days. That next weekend I set a target to take a Strava crown on a four mile segment I’d been eyeing up and did so comfortably. The weekend after that was the Trail Pursuit half marathon, which last minute route changes had turned into a 15 mile technical fell run. Bad news for people who paid in good faith for an accessible trail, good news for gluttons for punishment like myself. All seemed to be going to plan until a frustrating outing at Blencathra Fell... View Article
