Skyrunner!

A week and a half on from my seventh marathon of the year, and I'm looking ahead to my next! It's 3 and a half weeks until I face the tough mountains of the Matterhorn in Zermatt, Switzerland. I'm pretty nervous about this one... 3,300 meters of ascent and descent will be more than I've ever done before; and the profile of the course is aggresively up and down! This type of race is also known as Skyrunning - awesome.
In preparation I'm heading up to the Lake District a fortnight before the challenge to test my legs on Skafell Pike. At just shy of 1,000 meters, three times up and down should do the trick...! Gulp.
It's going to be an amazing experience, and I can only imagine the views. Zermatt is famous for not allowing any cars to drive into the town (unless they're eco-friendly electric cars!), so the pollution and noise is going to be about as minimal as it could be.
I'd like to thank Mens Running magazine, and Scotts for this too. I won a place in the 46 km race through the magazine, and Scotts will be looking after me when I'm there as the main sponsor for the event. They've also posted me a t shirt, which I've been testing out this week, and a pair of trail shoes which I'm heading out into Hampstead Heath with tomorrow morning.
Wish me luck!

To finish this blog post where I started, my seventh marathon was on the trails of Hertfordshire. I ran the Fairlands Valley Marathon, organised by local Stevenage running club, the Fairlands Valley Spartans.
The race was interesting! Rather than a marked course, competitors were given written directions (turn left at the set of trees, follow the fence and then bear right acros the field...) and off we went! To further confuse my directionless brain, the marathon ran alongside 12, 18 and 50 km races. Needless to say, at mile 22, an Ultrarunner behind me yelled "mate, the path goes this way!" and off I trotted on a half hour, 3 mile, detour. Realising my mistake, unsurprisingly, led to feeling demoralised and tired, and with 4 miles still to go, when I should have had one. I still managed to pull out 18th place (out of 155), so it could have been worse, and of course I should say that for the most part the course was very pretty - taking me through woods and cross country trails. My highlight: running through a beautiful village called Datchworth, where my Grandparents lived while they were still alive. I haven't been back there since, and running through was quite emotional.
I will be back next year, when I plan to run with a vengance and win the race!

Back on Track

This is a long overdue post; a lot has happened since the last time I wrote.

South Downs Marathon (marathon number 6!)
This was a fantastic run. The scenery was inspiring, the route was amazing, and the people incredibly friendly. I will definitely be going back.
For the overall day, this has been my favourite marathon of the year so far.














June
June was a weird month. I had a couple of bad weeks - with Glastonbury to blame for no running for 5 days (as well as a lot of drinking!); but the fortnight since has been pretty good, and I'm on track to run over 50 miles this week.
I also had some pretty good experiences during June:
- Mark Hines talking about ultra marathons! His trek across the Yukon was incredible, as is the ultramarathon through the Brazilian jungle
- Barefoot Ted was incredibly funny. He spoke to us (Peter joined me for this talk) about his story of getting into barefoot running, before taking us on a jog around Green Park. I've never seen so many Vibram wearings in one small place before...!
- Sean Conway was my favourite talk. Organised by the amazing charity My Million to One, Sean gave a hugely inspiring, and incredibly motivating, talk about his experiences cycling from Lands End to John O'Groats, cycling around the world, and of his plans to swim from LE to JO'G - which is now underway. Also, and perhaps most importantly, he's ginger.

To top off June, I've won 2 competitions! Primal Lifestyle ran a competition to win a pair of new season Vibrams. They enjoyed my story about how I got into barefoot running so much that they gave me the prize, which arrived today! The second was entry into the Ultraks marathon in Zermatt Switzerland in August, organised by Men's Running. It's going to be a crazy race - 3,300 meters of climb and the same descent around the Matterhorn mountain range. Wish me luck!

My final note is to say yet again that I love running around Hampstead Heath. I had a great 10 mile run yesterday with my running club, the Mornington Chasers, and tonight I ran a further 11 miles with Peter up around the woods and down through the extension. Good fun.

Oh, and I've decided that doing the aeroplane across the finish line of a race is a good way to end a marathon :-)