For my record equalling 14th marathon or ultra of the year I was, once more, on familiar ground. Although, even though it was my 3rd running of the Beachy Head Marathon, the course itself would be different. But I will come to that. Familiar ground has been a theme for the COVID era race calendars….

Much like most of my cobbled together race calendar of 2021, a mishmash of postponements and deferrals from 2020 and last minute impulse sign-ups, Manchester Marathon was not in the running at the start of the year.  But with Chicago and New York being removed a second time due to COVID travel restrictions, Erdogan not…

Loch Ness 2018 is still my favourite UK marathon, and is second only to Chicago in my world rankings. So coming into a rerunning of Loch Ness I could have had concerns, my memory tarnished like it has been at several other second runnings. What if it had been bad? Although I shouldn’t have been…

Back on Familiar footing at the Tring Ultra for my last 50K of the year, and my 11th ultra in 2021. Suffice to say I think I will be able to hit my 12 in 12 minimum target for the fourth year on the trot and will push my record of 14 in a year with…

The South Coast Challenge by Ultra Challenge or Action Challenge events has been on my race calendar before, back in 2019 when it became one of the 14 marathons and ultras I ran that year. In that instance I ran day one, 56K of the South Downs Way from Eastbourne to Hove Park in Brighton….

Green Man Ultra Having run this race 3 times anti-clockwise, twice as the Green Boy and once as the Green Man I thought, and incorrectly it seems, that the Green Boy would be a doddle on dry summer ground and that, with a complete understanding of OS Maps,  the route would be a simple to…

A while back I stated quite categorically that I wouldn’t run the same marathon more than once. Why? There are just too many races out there, and limited time in the remainder of my life, so why would I? I was a little deluded. I would build an early doors race calendar and start signing…

Would I run it again? Abso-fucking-lutely not! Yup, that was what I said back in 2016 after 19 hours of baking sunshine, the wrong shoes, darkness, glowsticks and cow shit, spread over 100KM of the Ridgeway. But COVID has made me reassess a lot of things, including going back to races I’d run before, something…

Something the race abstinence  COVID caused was a desperation in my 100 Marathon Club Quest. An urgency that wasn’t there at the beginning started to build as race after race was cancelled or postponed in 2020 and into 2021. What this meant for me was that first, I shifted the goalposts somewhat, changing the 100…

The Preamble With races coming back online I am increasingly finding myself signing up to ones I’ve done before. I know, I know, I used to question why you ever would. After all, there are so many races out there. What I’m finding is that, despite hunting high and low for new races, I am…

Coming in quick succession the Run to the Sea Brighton was barely a week after London 2 Brighton and for me, at least, completed the Ultraviolet Running slam of races, having completed both the Round Reading Ultra (with Lew) between Lockdown 1 and 2, and Run to the Sea Bournemouth (with Keith) a couple of…

I have been a bit remiss in my blogging duties. I started the podcast (the Hundred Marathon Club) in Lockdown 1.0 and have been doing that ever since as the primary outlet for my running life story. I enjoy it. I like writing it, finding new ways of making it more interesting, or fun, or…