As dawn broke on 2024, thinking about my goals around running, the air was thick with anticipation and the promise of adventure was strong. But at the same time, there was also an air of uncertainty about it for me. Last year was a good year in terms of ticking off some big items on my list. I completed events such as the Wild Horse 200, with UTS 50 following shortly after. But cooking myself on Day 1 of the Dragon’s Back, dropping down to the Hatchling course left me slightly uneasy going into 2024. This year, my trail and ultra-running journey is set to scale to new heights, literally and me ..read more

I have spent many thousands of hours trail running. In those thousands of hours, I have fallen victim to my own stupidity on more than one occasion. This post will detail some of my personal (uncoventional) tips for trail runners. Don’t expect tips for enhancing your running performance or form. These are focused more on avoiding embarrasment and unfortunate situations on the trail. Avoid caffeine mishaps Have you had caffeine related issues whilst out on a run? I certainly have. And it took me an embarrasingly long time to figure out it was my excess coffee intake to blame. Thankfully my frie ..read more

One of my ‘stretch’ goals this year was to try and improve my 5K PB (personal best) time. The problem with this goal and where I live, is that it’s actually really hilly and difficult to find a flat stretch of road. (I actually love getting elevation work in usually!) A few weeks ago I ran a 6x800m interval session, and realised I had run a 20 minute 5K even with 200m recovery jogs. It got me thinking – I hadn’t tried to improve my 5K PB I had achieved two years back which was just under 20 minutes at around roughly 19:45. The interval session was up and down the flattest stretch of road we ha ..read more

Recently, I embarked on a side quest to find shoes that are better able to deal with the extremely muddy and slippy trails we get here in the UK during the wetter months. I’ll share my findings and initial impressions of what I ended up going with – the Scarpa Spin ST shoes. Background – what led me to find the Scarpa Spin ST I recently raced a 50km ultra marathon called the OTT Ultra, which was based in the South of Wales, and took on many technical and muddy trails as we approached, and came off of Pen y Fan. I didn’t have a great shoe to pick for this race. It was early November, and we ha ..read more

Summarised, the Dragon’s Back Race was a week running the ‘spine’ of Wales in a week of particularly intense heat. This week-long adventure was interspersed with lasting memories and friendships forged in the shared enjoyment of the mountains of Wales (and the hardships we endured). The Dragon’s Back Race (Ras Cefn y Ddraig in Welsh) is a 380km, 6-day ultra running journey through Wales covering 17,400m of total height gain. It’s an extremely tough and challenging race. In the race’s own words: Today, it is considered to be the toughest mountain race in the world. Participants underestimate it ..read more

The third day of the Paddy Buckley Round Recce Experience with Climb South West had us starting in Llanberis and finishing in Capel Curig. This would cover legs 4 and 5 of the route. See other posts in this blog series: Paddy Buckley Round Recce Leg 1 Paddy Buckley Round Recce Legs 2 and 3 Weather was far kinder to us for legs 4 and 5 of the route than it was on the first leg on day 1. Staying in the fancy “Rocks Hostel” in Capel Curig, we were up early once again for breakfast and to get our water and gear ready for the day. Transport in the van took us to the road next to the Llyn (Lake) P ..read more

Continuing on with the Paddy Buckley Round blog series, this post details the experience over legs 2 and 3. These experience or ‘recce’ days were done with Climb South West as a group effort. See the the previous part 1 (leg 1) blog post here My Strava activity shows we covered about 38km (24 miles) on this stretch (day 2 of 3) with about 3800m (12,500ft) of elevation. The route we followed started at Nantmor and ended up with us finishing in Llanberis. We bagged about 19 peaks on this day (according to Summit Bag) with the highest being Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa). Morning Start A short drive from ..read more

Over the last week I spent 3 days in North Wales doing a Paddy Buckley Round ‘experience’ with a group organised by Climb South West. The Paddy Buckley Round is a fell running challenge in Snowdonia, Wales (Eryri). The full route itself forms a circuit of a bit more than 100km, with around 10,000m of climbing elevation. You must hit all 47 summits on the route. I thought I would write up the experience from my perspective, and hopefully it provides a bit of insight to those wishing to tackle it too. We took on roughly 20-23 miles (32-35km) per day, with an average climbing elevation of about 3 ..read more

Last weekend I got to run the Preseli Beast. A 24 mile fell race with 4652 ft (1418 meters) of elevation, here in my local county of Pembrokeshire. I’ve posted about the Preseli Hills before in this blog post. They can be surprisingly challenging to run, but are a lot of fun. A few weeks on from Wild Horse 200 South Wales, my coach had deemed me mostly recovered (after scrutinising a few different runs along with my heart rate data). I was asked to forfit the 30 mile HOWUM ultra marathon I had planned for the weekend (6th May), and step down to something slightly less challenging instead (as U ..read more

After a string of successful ultra marathons in 2022, and wanting to push myself further, I signed up for my biggest challenge yet. The Wild Horse 200 South Wales. The Wild Horse 200 is a 200 miles (a bit more really) continuous multi-day ultra marathon, and features around 10,000 meters (32,000 ft) of vertical elevation both up and down. At the time I signed up I still hadn’t fully grasped the magnitude of what I had gotten myself into. It was only a couple of weeks ahead of the race when the enormity of the situation really started to sink in. Ramping up to the Wild Horse 200 South Wales I r ..read more