Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

It’s been a pretty good week this week, with 2 team victories for the Moorlands ladies and lots of excellent performances by friends both locally and abroad. It was the Vets Cross Country Race on Wednesday evening, and  being the first time I had done this race, I really didn’t know what to expect. It was also going to be my first race for Staffordshire Moorlands and so I didn’t want to embarrass myself by having a really crap run. The event, organised by Cheadle Running Club, is pretty low key and starts from the cricket club at Oakamoor. The ladies’ 4 ¼ mile route is pretty flat and follows the old railway track to The Ramblers Retreat before heading up into the woods and then back down again and along the track back to the cricket club. I was a little nervous for a couple of reasons – namely it would be the first time I would meet a lot of the Moorlands team, and secondly, I hadn’t done a race of less that 27 miles since doing the London Marathon back in April! How I would co...

I thought that running was meant to be an easy sport, but it’s been a funny old weekend full of highs and lows and I’m beginning to think that it would be much easier to be a couch potato! It all started last Thursday, when after weeks of iffing and areing, I finally made the decision to resign from Trentham and to join Staffordshire Moorlands AC. This wasn’t a snap decision, but is something that I have been thinking about for a while now, but I’ve been so loyal to the Green Army and been honoured to be a part of that team, that writing out my resignation was extremely difficult. Even when I was handing it over, I broke down and cried, feeling absolutely terrible and convinced I was letting so many people down. However, my head eventually overruled my heart, and with me wanting to focus more on fell and trail running, and more of the long distance races, it became clear that I would have more opportunities by moving clubs. It didn’t make things any easier and it was difficult knowin...

Things over the past few weeks have been pretty hectic to say the least, and in the words of Cindy from Scary Movie, “It’s been a while!” since I’ve had the opportunity to actually sit down and reflect on things. It seems like a lifetime ago now that I flew out to Galway for the World Trail Championships, where I donned my GB vest for the first time in nearly 3 years. Thinking back, that was a fantastic weekend, and once again I met some great people and made new friends from the ultra running world in the form of   Stuart, Craig and Andrew, as well as seeing the more familiar faces of Allen, Julian, Karen, Lucy and last but not least Heather. GB Team minus Andy Smith and Julian Rendall The race itself was certainly not what many of us were expecting, and with living in Stoke, no amount of running could have prepared me for what we encountered over in Galway . Heavy rain in the preceding days meant a last minute change to the course on safety grounds, and what a course it was...