Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

 I don't tend to do many road races these days, but when I saw that my old running club was hosting the Werrington 10k on the same weekend as our arrival in the UK prior to the World Championships, I ended up registering for the race. At the start of the year, I set myself 10 goals for the year, one of which was to run a sub 45 minutes 10k. My PR for 10k was set many years ago and stands at 37.06 so there was no point in aiming for a PR - I'm unable to run anywhere near that kind of pace these days - and in all honesty, even 45 minutes is a push given that I train for much longer races these days. But having a goal keeps me motivated and so going into Werrington, I thought it would be a good opportunity to give it another try (I'd ran the St Albert 10k and the Hypothermic 10k earlier in the year, and had ran around 46 minutes for both). One thing to note is that Staffordshire is not flat, and that the roads around Werrington are definitely undulating if not hilly. Going sub...

Way back in April 2006, I ran the London Marathon as a member of a team. It was the English National Marathon Championships, I was running for Newcastle (Staffs) AC, and our ladies team came away with national team gold that day. It was an incredible result for the team, and to top things off even further, I personally smashed my marathon PR by another 7 minutes, finishing in 2 hours 47 minutes which gave me 14th place in the ladies event. The marathon was always my strongest distance and I rarely lacked the confidence that I could hit my goal - I've now stood on the start line of over 60 marathons over the years, and even today, I could still probably predict my finishing time over the distance. A few weeks after running my marathon PR, I received a letter from Norman Wilson, the Team GB Ultra Distance Coach and Manager, asking if I'd be interested in competing in the Boddington 50k in the August. This race would provide the opportunity to qualify to represent England at the W...

Although I had completed the Canadian Death Race twice before, both times had seen me lose a considerable amount of time on leg 4 of the race, affectionately known as the "Hamell Assault". It was also on this leg that I DNF'd one year - for some reason, Mount Hamell is always a struggle for me, and I end up spending most of my time throwing up shortly after the climbing starts, and then being unable to eat or drink anything for hours afterwards, which results in me not having the race that I was hoping for. When originally registering for CDR this year, my goal was to get under 20 hours. I'd been doing far more hill work in my training, albeit on the treadmill, and I was feeling much stronger than in previous years, so much so that I truly believed I could go sub 20. However, my race plan changed following the announcement that I had been selected to represent Canada at the World 24-hour Championships in October - not surprisingly, the 24-hour became a greater priorit...

Last year, I registered for the Sinister 7 100-miler. Long story short, I wasn't properly trained for a mountain ultra at the time, and I ended up with a DNF at the end of leg 4. I had successfully completed the 50 miler the previous year and had thoroughly enjoyed the run, and whilst I had debated going back again to give the 100 miler another go, one of the things that prevented me leaping at the opportunity was the the first few miles of leg 1 - there was just too much pavement for my liking, it was far too crowded, and it was really difficult to get in to a flow for several miles which put me in the wrong frame of mind before we'd even got properly started with the race!  Sinister definitely was not on my race plans for this year, but when my coach scheduled in a 50km trail run on the same day as the race, I sought out a last minute bib and registered for the 50km,  Although this would mean running leg 1, this year the route had changed, and runners would be directed on to...