Stories and tips from around the world.
Another autumn marathon meant once again training through a hot summer, to prepare for my third marathon of 2025. This time though, I wouldn't get to see changing scenery to distract me as I ran, instead I'd be running many laps of a running track. It started off as a novelty, but would it last?
I was woken up around 02:00 by the people staying in the room above. It seemed like they’d come in drunk, and were now stomping around and bumping into everything. Eventually I drifted back to sleep until 05:30, when the thunderous sound of snoring from the room above woke me. It would soon be time to prepare for the day ahead… Today would see somewhere around 90,000 people running a marathon with …
We were finally about to run our third Super Half, the halfway point for this series. My three most recent ‘proper’ half marathons have seen steady improvements on the road back to my pre-pandemic times. Each of those races are ones where I’ve resisted the temptation to push too hard too soon, but have still had to walk at some point towards the end of each race. In fact, I’ve not ran an entire ra …
My third time running this race, even though I wouldn’t be running GU36 this year, and I was determined to do better than the previous two times. This would be a way of confirming that my change in training routine is making a difference. As I’d run about 2.5 laps last year, my goal was to run at least 3 laps this time, and to average around 07:30/mi. My biggest goal I think really was to beat las …
Only two weeks since my most recent half marathon race, I was back with Phoenix Running again: chasing after a medal made from LEGO. That was reason enough to enter this one. As I didn’t have my car with me it meant Carmen would once again have to drive is to Walton-on-Thames for the race. Whilst the conditions were different, the route was the same - the Sunbury Lock route. We’d decided we’d run …
I did the Boston (UK) marathon back in April, and that really hadn’t gone to plan with all the wind and rain on the day. It was probably one of the wettest races I’ve ever done (though maybe not the wettest run overall) as I think it may have been worse than Chicago. It was at least colder anyway, as I remembered Chicago still being warm despite it raining throughout. After Boston, I’d gotten so c …
Having had so few short races since 2019, I really needed to find more to do - something to keep me practicing at speed work at a time when it’s not been that fast. Rutland is a place I’ve been interested in running at before, mostly for parkrun, but wanting a fairly local 10K I felt this one would be a good choice. Since GU36, I've not really done any speed work. I've done two parkruns, which are …
The last time we went to Guernsey it hadn’t gone to plan for Carmen due to the eye infection leading to events that required her to pull out of the race early. I can’t imagine it had been an easy decision, but it had been a sensible one. It did however leave her with unfinished business, and the need to return again. I’d taken about twenty minutes off my time, and I was close to a sub-7 hour race. …
The entire point of me entering this race again was to force me to run a half marathon between Boston Marathon and Guernsey Ultra 36. So in a way, this was like the first of two tapering runs from my long run at Boston, before my actual target race. With this in mind I didn't really have a target other than to finish the race. Ideally though, the time for doing so should be between 1hr30 and 1hr45 …
My first marathon of 2024. Would it also be my last one this year, or would I manage to fit a marathon into the autumn? I think this time around I started training far too late as I didn't have a good base to be working from after having had an easy summer following quite a few months of reduced training from other non-running issues. My half marathon at the end of December was so bad, I knew I'd …
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 …
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".
This year the MK 20 wasn’t quite timed right for me to be doing it, so I needed an alternative. The best time one, and the easiest one for me to get to was the Hillingdon 20 (formerly the Finchley 20). It’s not an area I know that well so I’d be going into this one not really knowing what to expect. My previous 20 milers hadn’t been brilliant this training cycle, but I figured if I could get aroun …
It was finally here, after these years of waiting, it was the Jordan Impact Marathon.
