Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

Since I last wrote just over a week ago, things have already happened that have had an impact on our lives here in Leduc. Firstly, last Monday we lost our little cat Khayman. Although he was an old man, his passing was unexpected and so sudden that I still haven't got my head around the fact that he isn't with us anymore. He'd been fine on the journey up from Phoenix and he appeared to have settled into the new house quite comfortably, but by late Sunday evening, he was very lethargic and just wasn't himself. By 2am he had passed over that rainbow bridge and the little cat died in my arms whilst I cried my heart out. I felt guilty that I couldn't do anything to help him, but I was grateful that I had been there with him and he wasn't alone at the end. I still wonder if there was something I could have done but the reality is that at almost 20 years of age, his little body had more than likely had enough and it was just his time to go. I'm happy he made ...

It's hard to believe that we only left Phoenix just over a week ago after an emotional goodbye to the city we had called home for the past 2 1/2 years. Sitting here now in our new home in Leduc, the intense heat and the desert trails to which I had become so familiar seem so far away in both distance and time. It's been a strange week - I've been so excited to be on the road heading north to start a new chapter in our lives, but I've felt pangs of longing when I've seen friends' pictures of those same trails on social media. The build up to our move was pretty stressful what with Andy working away most of the time and me having to pack and arrange pretty much everything in his absence. Looking back, I'm surprised we managed to get moved on time and I'm pretty sure if our amazing friends Skye and Ian hadn't been there to help us load up in those last couple of days, we would have really struggled. Thankfully we hit our schedule and the truck with...

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 ...

A couple of weeks ago, I was all geared up for racing the Elephant Mountain 22k and I was looking forward to a good hard race to give me some indication as to how things were going since ATY. Unfortunately, Andy was called away to a job in Canada at the last minute which meant I was home alone in the couple of days leading up to the race. I really didn’t mind being on my own and still had every intention of getting out to Cave Creek for a good run, but our elderly cat had other ideas and for the best part of 5 hours during the early hours of Saturday morning, he meowed and meowed and meowed. By the time he eventually went quiet, I had fallen into a deep sleep, missing my alarm and disappointingly missing the race. I was extremely frustrated as I knew that my training had been going really well, I was feeling good and I had been ready to race hard. I desperately wanted to put in some effort to test my current fitness and I figured the only way to do this was to hit the n...

If the first month of 2018 is anything to go by, then the rest of the year is going to be simply amazing! After ATY, I had a couple of easy weeks where I spent time walking the pups and then gently jogging to allow my body to recover from its exploits in December. It felt so good to be back just jogging although the legs did still feel a little tired, but it was nice to get back out on the nearby trails and enjoy the views and being outdoors. Back on the trails and enjoying the recovery runs :-) It also gave me some time for reflection and as I looked back at my performance at ATY, I decided that I would put my name forward to the GB team selectors anyway - as coach Adam said, the worse outcome would be that they would say no which wouldn't exactly be the end of the world. So I pinged an email and put things out of my mind - the team would be announced on January 25th so no use spending all my energy thinking about it. That same week, I had some exciting news - I ...