Tales of Trails, Mountains and Rocky Roads

I usually use this blog to record my racing successes and failures, or to keep track of my training throughout the year, but 2020 has been a little bit strange and somewhat surreal to say the least. Looking back at my last post in January of this year, I’m almost inclined to say, “be careful what you wish for!” Yes, the year did get off to a positive start,   but my words of “ Compared to last year, I'm certainly not planning on racing as much as I did during 2019”, and “this year is going to be pretty quiet …” almost makes me wonder whether I have a sixth sense of some kind that, had I paid attention, could have predicted all of this! In all seriousness though, nobody could have imagined nor predicted how different things would be this year, and we’ve all had to adapt and change our daily lives to get through these past few months. I’ve held off doing a post for several weeks now – we’ve all heard enough about Covid and I really didn’t want all that negativity coming through on ...

2020 so far has got off to a good start - I'm enjoying my running again and with a variety of road, trail, track and treadmill, it's certainly keeping things interesting. It also helps that I have no races in the immediate future - much as I love to race, I think I also needed a little bit of downtime to help me rekindle that relationship I once had, where I ran without pressure, ran for me, and ran for pure enjoyment. So far, coach Paul has done a great job in helping me to keep things ticking over to maintain some fitness, but keeping things at a level where my body and mind are recovering from all the stress of racing last year. I like it, and I'm happy. First run of 2020 - no pressure and just happy to be outside having fun! Compared to last year, I'm certainly not planning on racing as much as I did during 2019 when I raced 3 x 50km, the 125km Canadian Death Race, Iron Horse 100 miler, the 24 hour track race, and a few road races of 15km or more. This year...

So another Christmas has been and gone, and 2020 arrives in just 2 days. I seriously cannot believe that this is our ninth Christmas since we left the UK and next time, we'll be celebrating a decade since we left Staffordshire and England behind us. Christmas has once again been a quiet affair with just Andy, myself and the pups. I remember last year when we were so sad having just lost Brandy, and it was inevitable that she would enter our thoughts this year, and will do so for many years to come. Our beautiful girl Brandy at our wedding :) But whilst we still miss Brandy immensely, we did have a happy Christmas, thanks to our 3 pups Wilson, Tillie and April. I was so happy that we managed to get out for a Christmas Day run as a pack - considering I was running with 3 dogs, they all behaved so well, and I was greatly impressed with how they positioned themselves and ran in line with each other. We then spent a day out at Elk Island, having a lovely little walk besid...

For the past 3 years, I have been trying to break 130 miles at 24 hour events in the hope that it will give me a better chance of being selected to the British national team – my best is just over 129 and whilst that was enough for me to make selection for the 2018 European 24-hour championships, I ended up withdrawing as it clashed with our move back to Canada and I didn’t feel as focused on the race as I should have been. This year was no different. I had registered for Desert Solstice several months ago, it was to be my final event of the year, and once again, I was hoping to exceed my goal. I went into the race feeling fit and strong, confident that I could do it, but also cautious of being too cocky as anything really can happen in an ultra! My training this year had been somewhat different than in previous years, and instead of 2 to 3 hour runs and lots of negative splits, tempo runs and progression runs, I had done more reps, more tempo runs, and definitely much longer...