The Young Feller

ashmei have cracked it. The best & most comfortable running socks, or any type of sock in fact, that I have worn to date.  I've ran nearly 40 miles in them since ashmei kindly donated a pair to us ambassadors on Saturday morning and they honestly still feel & look like, brand new! As soon as you feel them you can just tell they will be quality, but, as we all know, some things feel good in hand but don't quite do the job you want them to.  I can't say that for this bit of kit though, they do exactly what they promise on the labelling. As I mentioned, I've ran nearly 40 miles in them already including every type of terrain you can imagine apart from snow!  I've tested them on the roads - flat, up hill and down hill as well as at a casual speed and a race pace.  I've ran up to Darwen tower in them on the trails and I made sure I crossed muddy fields and fells in them.  You can never test something too much can you?  Well, only up unt...

March 5th 2015.  I heard the ping of the email tone to my mobile phone just after 5pm.  Usually it's some advertisement or flyer about offers or discounts but this email was different!  I'd received an email titled; "Congratulations - you're invited to our Ambassadors' Day".  Normally an email beginning with congratulations would be spam regarding a long lost relative who had left me millions but for once I had received an email that would hold some very exciting news. I had been short-listed by ashmei as a brand ambassador.  Hundreds and hundreds had applied but I was amongst the lucky few to be considered on the final list to represent the brand near and far.  I had plenty of planning to do in order to make the journey down to Hertfordshire but the opportunity I was presented with was more than worth the time and effort and I gratefully accepted the offer to attend. ashmei - huge success is well on it's way, in my opinion So, I had my jo...

I've yet to title a blog post after a specific race, but, I thought this one deserved it.  What used to be famously and formerly known as the Half Tour of Pendle, was rightly renamed in honour of Clayton Le Moors and fell running legend Stan Bradshaw.  The route was also slightly adjusted to reduce erosion, but the name of the race is the topic to start with in this post. A little about Stan... Stan sadly passed away at the age of 97 in 2010, leaving behind a wonderful legacy in the sport of fell running.  He became only the second man to break the 28 year old record of Bob Graham, who in his famous "Bob Graham round", climbed 42 lakeland peaks in 24 hours.  He ran his first fell race at Rivington Pike in 1930 and due to being the eldest member of the Fell Runners Assocation (FRA) he was officially the worlds oldest fell runner.  To somewhat maybe top all those feats, he finished second in the inaugural Three Peaks fell race in 1954, which he went on ...

The title says it all, as I experienced my first blow out during the Trotters 5 on Sunday morning.  After all my racing last weekend and a decent but not over tiring training week of 30 ish miles, I felt in decent shape to race, especially as I opted out of racing the fast & flat Podium 5k on Saturday night. I ran the Trotters 5 last year, but, due to building work around the area/course, they had decided to reverse the route, therefore also slightly extending it to a 5.25 mile race consisting of 2 laps.  It was a tougher course in general too, about a minute slower on times from last year, apparently.  I did beat my time from last year but I expected that anyway. I started well and my first 2 mile split times were really on the money in terms of my pace, running a 7:20 which was mostly up hill then a 6:55 the following mile.  I felt good and my time was well on course for my pre-race aim.  Then it was actually coming off the back of a downhill, w...

Race The Night (and Day) Away Well I did it, I ran 4 times in 39 hours over the weekend, starting from 7pm on Friday night with our club race, The Dark Un.  Most people will never run a fell race and for most people hills are their worst nightmare but I can certainly say I've only a handful of times had more fun racing than I did doing the Dark Un. Having only ran with a head torch on 3 previous occasions, I was slightly unsure on how it was going to pan out, although 2 of those mentioned occasions were in fact recce's for this race itself.  My aim was to avoid injury and enjoy the boggy moors as much as possible (that does sound odd, but it's a thrill, honest!) the start of The Dark Un (images courtesy of  +fellephant  )  safely crossing the finish line, phew! post race, what an experience that was!! As I mentioned, my main aim was to finish the race unscathed and just add to my fell running and night running experience but I did ...

A Kick Up The Asics  Continuing the Asics theme along with my race updates, this weekend has been slightly different to my normal running routine.  After all my racing recently, coupled with a quite high increase in training miles since December, I chose to rest on both Friday and today (Sunday), just to give myself a bit of a break. Yesterday I raced the Winter Hill Fell Race, in Littleborough near Rochdale.  This was, to date, the furthest fell race I have ran (9 miles) and I was a bit dubious about getting lost on the tops, which turned out to be a worry about nothing in the end!  There were 215 in the race field and I finished 133rd.  This doesn't sound the best but fell running is on a whole different level to road running, where I am disappointed not to be in the top 125 in a field of 500 and if I walked at any point in a road race it would only be for injury reasons, where as fell races sometimes give you no option due to the nature of the climb,...

Mixing Up My Run - The Asics Way After a solid week of trying out the Gel-glorify shoes, I have this week moved on to the 33DFA's, in order to continue mixing up my run!  Monday night is now the hill sprint training night with a few of the clubs members and last night we completed week 3 of our 10 hill sprint reps.  One more week of 10's then we are progressing to the next step, a quite daunting, 15 reps! Before going in to more detail around the DFA's, I will update you guys and girls on my running/racing over the weekend.  On Saturday I went over to Whitworth, just outside of Rochdale to race in Sidney & Andy's birthday 5k trail race.  The series of races, around 1 a month are set up by Andy O'Sullivan MBE, who is a really top guy!  He is one of those personalities who just captures the moment as finishers come in and he really does love running and all the organisation surrounding his races couldn't be better! He had organised this race for S...