The Young Feller

As most people are aware by now, especially my fellow Dashers, I absolutely love racing.  Last night I ran my 30th race since December 14th, this doesn't include parkrun's, cross country or any form of relay (the Viper series in my case). Since 'removing' myself from football earlier this year, I have trained at around the 40 mile mark per week, with my race mileage usually included in that figure.  The competitiveness of football has been transferred to my running, hence the number of races I do.  I was an avid player of the beautiful game, 6 times a week and commonly 7 times a week in a lot of cases, so to me it is no surprise that I have had to replace this with another form of competition and that happens to be running! Since my last post when I'd not long ran the Pendle Hill fell race, I've enjoyed a good few run outs on the fells - the Saddleworth Cake Race, Great Hameldon Hill, Foe Edge and last night Mearley Clough.  A great variation in terms o...

Over the past few weeks I have continued with my racing, ever since completing the Viper 369.  People suggested taking time off to recover, mainly to avoid injuring myself, but, I feel good and felt no reason to do this. I ran the Ron Hill 10k the day after the Viper and that was tough.  I really was tired but I was determined just to get myself through it and over the finish line.  A real slog, the first time I've ran a race and just constantly thought about finishing - nothing to do with the course or anything but purely due to my fatigue from the day before.  I ran a 53 minute 10k which I haven't done since I started racing over a year ago, so naturally it was disappointing but I knew the reasons why so it was nothing to worry about. rain sodden day in Accrington for the 2nd Ron Hill 10k, adding to the pain One positive was that I actually beat my time from last year, which I guess on paper will show as an improvement but nowhere near my current 10k...

The Viper 369 - Saturday 28th March 2015 - Delamere Forest, Cheshire Back in October, I saw an advert for an event in Delamere Forest.  Viper 369.  It sounded interesting and the price was great considering how long the event would be held for, if indeed I opted for the 9 hour challenge, which, inevitably, I did.  The concept is simply broken down in to laps of a 3.2 mile trail circuit.  The 3.0 required 5 laps then 6.0 a further 6 laps and the 9.0 a further 7 laps. After reading in to the unknown concept, I asked a couple of friends if they fancied the challenge.  They both gladly accepted and there we go, we'd entered ourselves for the Viper 9.0 -  The full 9 hours, near 20 laps of trail racing on a route we had no prior knowledge of, what more could you want?!  (I am indeed serious too, no sarcasm there.  Going in to the unknown in running terms is something of a huge plus, 99% of the time) The months between mid-October and ...

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...