Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

The Black Canyon 100km was one of my goal races this year and I was pretty excited about it. I was under no illusions that I would get one of the illustrious "Golden Tickets" to the Western States but I did have a goal in mind - a top 10 finish and a time of around 11 to 11 1/2 hours. Training had gone well leading up to the race and I was feeling fairly confident that I would achieve my goals. The week before race day, Andy and I headed out to the course to check out the aid stations so that he knew where he needed to be. It was a gorgeously sunny day with blue skies all round and we decided to take the dogs on a bit of a hike whilst we were out there before having lunch and some of the delicious homemade pie at the Rock Springs Cafe near to Black Canyon City. The trails were in amazing shape and with the amount of rain we'd had a couple of weeks earlier, everything was a lush green colour and looked absolutely beautiful. Being on the trail that I would be racing al...

It's only 4th February and I've already done 3 races this year. OK, they haven't been A races and I haven't tapered for them, but the good news is that I am feeling somewhat fitter right now and the races have given me confidence for the Black Canyon 100km which takes place in just 2 weeks time. The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy and I've had some good solid training runs where I am finally running around 7.30 miling on the roads. I'm nowhere near as quick as I was a couple of years ago (was I really running close to 6 minute miles back then?!), but having a bit of pace again is a good feeling :-) With all of my races being on trails, I do all my training on the trails whenever I can although it is difficult during the week due to work commitments and not being able to catch the daylight hours. Weekends are much different and I am happily spending a good couple of hours in the company of the cacti. Last weekend's run was a little dif...