Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

Do you ever do something and then wonder afterwards what on earth you were thinking about? That's what happened with the Daisy Mountain Half Marathon. Coach Adam had given me a 10 mile tempo run to do and having admitted that I struggle with the longer tempo runs on my own and prefer to do them under race conditions, I thought it would be a good idea to enter the half marathon to make it easier. I also thought it would be interesting to see how quickly I could run given that my last road race was San Diego Marathon almost a year ago whilst the last half marathon I had done was over 5 years ago at the Hypothermic Half on a freezing cold day in Calgary. Back then I just dipped under 90 mins - I've since slowed down even more, especially with my focus being on the longer distances and trail running these days, but I thought maybe if I could motivate myself enough, I might just be able to do it again. Hypothermic Half Marathon, Calgary - a very cold day and the last time I w...

Wowzers! What a whirlwind this past couple of weeks have been but finally, at last, things have started to settle down a wee bit which is giving us chance to breathe. After Black Canyon Ultras a couple of weeks ago, I alluded to the fact that there are going to be some changes over the coming months that would result in stressful times and changes to my race plans. Back in January, I thought my racing year was pretty much set out with Zion 100k and Fat Dog 120 on the horizon. The former got knocked on the head when I had news I'd been selected to represent Great Britain at the European 24 hours champs in Romania at the end of May - they considered it too close for me to fully recover, and despite living in the desert for the past 3 years, they thought the heat would affect me too much. I wasn't concerned about the heat - I was more concerned as to whether 5 weeks would be enough time to recover from a tough 100k at altitude, but as instructed, I withdrew from the race ...