Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

The Red Deer Marathon wasn't really on my agenda for this year, but having received a phone call from the organisers a couple of months ago inviting me back to defend my title, I decided to go ahead and register despite the race being just 3 weeks post London. Although in the past, I would happily run a marathon followed by a 100k a month or so later, I don't recover as quickly as I used to do and I have creaks and groans in the old body that just take a little longer to iron out following a good hard race. Saying that though, since I completed the London Marathon at the end of last month, I've been taking it relatively easy running wise as I knew that Red Deer was coming up, and I have to say that the effects of London seemed to be in the distant past when I stood on the start line on Sunday morning. Last year, I won the marathon in a time of 3.11 and in all honesty, all I wanted this year was to run a little quicker just to prove to myself that I was fitter and faste...

It was a little strange landing at Heathrow Airport on the Friday morning. I expected to feel a sense of belonging and yet despite things being very familiar to me, it also felt foreign and unusual - a far cry from home. The 8 1/2 hour flight had been ok except for a 3 year old boy sat on the row behind - he cried from the moment we took off until the moment we landed, at which point he nodded off in to a blissful sleep just as we were all about to disembark. With having the marathon Sunday morning, I desperately wanted to have a good sleep on the over night flight to get me on British time as quickly as possible, but with just 2 hours of broken sleep and with a 7 hour time difference, I wasn't feeling too lively when we arrived. We'd decided to collect my race bib on the Friday which would free up Saturday for just lounging around and getting myself mentally prepared for the following day. By 3pm, we'd already battled the tube from Heathrow to our hotel at Greenwi...