Two weeks out from the Boston Marathon (in Lincolnshire), and I should really be doing a marathon-paced half marathon as part of tapering. Instead, having not done a 10K race this year, and this race being one I often do, I decided I may as well do a 10K with about 80% effort. With a decent warm-up and cool-down alongside it; maybe it'd be similar effort to a slower half. At least, that was my rea …
April 14, 2024
After running this race last year, I thought: "never again". Hilly by name, hilly by nature, and 20 miles of it was just more than I felt was needed. However, after deciding to do GU36 one more time, it turned out this would be the perfect training run for it. So that "never again" became "one more time".
March 24, 2024
For today’s race I would be a the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park for a RunThrough event, and that meant travelling across London from the west, and an outrageously early start to get there. When we got to Liverpool Street we found the Elizabeth line wasn’t running very well, so was then a 14 minute wait for a train to get us to Stratford. We thought the toilet queue in Westfields would be better a …
March 3, 2024
Usually my first race of the year would be 10K, but I had a lot of work needed to get back up to longer distance running, and so I sacrificed that for getting in more long runs. I’d need to rely on mid-week speed work, and getting in fast park runs when I could in order to build up speed. Endurance needed to come first when the end goal is actually Guernsey Ultra 36, rather than a decent time at t …
February 11, 2024
My sister is a big fan of anything Disney, but specifically, The Lion King. So, my second visit to the Disney 100 exhibition was booked in to be with her on a cold January morning. Though for months before, until Christmas Day when I gave her the tickets, what she didn't realise was that we'd be going to see The Lion King stage play in the West End in the afternon after, with a short interlude at …
January 13, 2024
The Winter Half in Milton Keynes is quite often my final race of the year these days. I’d hoped I’d have done my 50th parkrun yesterday, and would be going to MK on the way home from London, but due to circumstances outside of our control that was not to be. I didn’t really feel like racing, but this one is one that I do like to do every year, so wasn’t going to miss it. I was up at 06:15 for br …
December 10, 2023
November 20th 2016. I ran during the torrential downpour of ‘Storm Angus’ before flying to Nepal for an adventure I would never forget. I’d been to Kathmandu, and volunteered and ran a marathon around the mountain village of Kakani and the Shivapuri national park. In the days that followed I’d travelled all over Nepal, and had seen Annapurna from the Australian base camp, and took a flight past Mo …
November 5, 2023
I knew going into this race that what I’d consider a good time these days would be a big ask, and my best chance would be to try and go for a sub-1:30, and not push for better than that. My left shoulder had however been a cause of pain since Llanelli Half last weekend, and was not only at times difficult to move, but had also been keeping me awake at times. So the chances of that sub-1:30 seemed …
October 1, 2023
When I entered this race I thought I'd be doing it for fun, but then I heard that this was a relatively flat race and so would actually be quite a fast one. It could perhaps be a good chance to attempt a sub-90 again for the first time since before the pandemic. However, about a month before race day Carmen let me know they needed a 1:45 pacer, and as she would be pacing 2:15 at this race I figure …
September 24, 2023
I haven't really run many 10Ks lately, but this was one I only added to my race calendar in the last few weeks as part of celebrating Carmen's birthday. Whilst she would be pacing 65 minutes, I’d be free to run this at whatever pace I could manage. Based on recent races, I suspected early on that would be ‘not very fast’ compared to what I used to manage.. The night before this race I’d pulled a …
September 9, 2023
Budapest is a city my sister has wanted to visit for several years as she thought "the buildings look cool". Having changed my mind about returning to Greece just yet, I decided this would be a good opportunity to go with her, and see some of Hungary - beyond just Budapest. Neither of us expected a visit to Slovakia though.
August 8, 2023 to August 23, 2023 | 7 posts
My first trip to Cyprus had been for a half marathon race that never took place. It'd been postponed until 2022, but due to timings I decided to defer until the 2023 event as it'd work better that way for me, and it was still unclear what would happen with the pandemic. So once again I was going back, and would not just see the familiar sights of Limassol, but would see the unfamiliar sights of Leftkosia and the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus - the occupied part of the country on the other side of the UN green line border.
February 28, 2023 to March 20, 2023 | 7 posts
I've dreamt of visiting Petra since I'd learnt the place I'd seen watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was a real place, and located in Jordan. It wasn't used as Petra in the film, but was the location of the lost Holy Grail, guarded by an ancient Knight of the Temple of Soloman. I knew one day I wanted to return to Egypt to see what I'd missed and thought a few days extra to visit Petra could bolt onto that. So far though, I've not made it back to Egypt, but I did get an opportunity to spend some time in Jordan which would create a completely different adventure to the one I'd imagined.
November 15, 2022 to December 6, 2022 | 14 posts
“In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” -- Orson Welles In 2009 as part of a short trip around Europe, I'd visited Italy and had seen the likes of Naples, Pompeii, Rome, and Venice. Thirteen years later I was now returning, this time with my sister in tow, to see some of the places I'd not seen. My sister's last overseas trip had been Croatia and Slovenia where she'd seen a lot of Venetian influence, now she'd get to see a more modern view of Italy. What had started off as an idea for seeing Milan soon expanded into a week long trip around the Lombardy and Tuscany regions of Italy.
August 30, 2022 to September 24, 2022 | 10 posts
For my first trip of 2022, I was heading to the Bailiwick of Guernsey for a 36 mile ultra marathon around the island. As with any other trip to a new place, of course I'd try to get in as much tourism as I could whilst there as well. Unusually, I'd be flying in the afternoon before the race, and then flying home a few days later. It'd give me chance to spend a day cycling around the island, just so long as my legs were up for it after what was going to be one of the toughest ultra marathons I've done so far. === If you’ve enjoyed these posts you can also view the full photo album on Flickr.
May 3, 2022 to May 17, 2022 | 5 posts
This country split into two by conflict is one which my trip would also be divided into two due to the pandemic. For my first part of the trip I would be there sightseeing as 2021 approaches it's end, and would be returning there at the start of 2022 for the race that has now been postponed three times. Sightseeing would no be straight forward though. Some places are temporarily closed, and most tours that I attempted to book were cancelled, including one into North Cyprus. It also didn't help that a major storm was on it's way in, just in time for my arrival… If you'd like to see more photographs from this trip, they're available to view on Flickr.
November 16, 2021 to December 11, 2021 | 10 posts
Twelve years ago, before the age of the smart phone, I visited Berlin at the start of my adventure spanning three European countries. I was younger then, and less experienced at travelling, and with a friend in tow, we had a tendency to get lost. Now I was returning to run the Berlin Marathon as the first part of a railway journey around Germany in a time when a global pandemic is at the forefront of everyone's minds. How would it affect this adventure, and what would be different? === The full photo album for this trip can be found on Flickr.
September 14, 2021 to October 8, 2021 | 14 posts
I have to mostly agree with Sir Terry - there are so many bikes in Amsterdam with lanes specifically for them. As long as you're alert it's not a problem. It's so different in some ways from other European cities, yet also strangely similar. It's also incredibly flat (if you ignore the bridges) so it sounded like it could be a good place to go PB chasing for a marathon. There was plenty of training; but poor planning meant this would be a challenge… “My experience in Amsterdam is that cyclists ride where the hell they like and aim in a state of rage at all pedestrians while ringing their bell loudly, the concept of avoiding people being foreign to them.” -- Sir Terry Pratchett If you’ve enjoyed these posts you can also view the full photo album on Flickr.
October 18, 2019 to October 8, 2020 | 7 posts
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” -- J. R. R. Tolkien When I first visited New Zealand it was a very short trip, and a very unsuccessful one. Every sight I was hoping to see was fraught with problems caused by the weather. It was like we'd stumbled into Moria and awoken a Balrog that had followed us all the way to Mordor (or Tongariro rather). Nine years later it was time to make that long-expected return to the country that had doubled as Middle Earth. What would we face this time?
January 5, 2019 to February 17, 2019 | 18 posts
A few days spent in Switzerland as 2019 began. I got to see the sights of Geneva and Zurich, and then experienced delay after delay trying to get home: snow, emergency ascents, baggage collection, and tube trains with technical difficulties… If you've enjoyed these posts you can also view the full photo album on Flickr.
December 30, 2018 to January 5, 2019 | 7 posts
