On my biggest Ironman training weekend last year, I left the lido having swam 3km for the first time. My friend Josie took a photo of me jumping in the air ecstatic. It wasn't just because I'd swam further than I'd ever swum before but because I'd just read an email that said that Tricurious, [...]
Just four miles into the race I laid on the floor looking up at the sky. Seconds earlier I had been running along, following a thin trail of runners ahead of me, trying to keep up and keep them in sight so as not lose my way. I turned a corner, slipped on some ice [...]
On Saturday I gave a talk at the Breast Cancer Care marathon training day. Half of the runners will be taking on a marathon for the first time in April. I stood there, having now done 11 of them, to share what I've learned along the way. I tried to tell them that everything will be [...]
The first week back at work after Christmas is always a struggle. This morning, as I carried my bike down five flights of stairs because of a broken lift, I realised that this ultra marathon I'm doing is getting quite close. A week ago I could still think of it as being 'next year'. Today it's [...]
For the fourth instalment of my podcast I met adventurer Anna McNuff to go for a run and chat about her upcoming challenge to run the length of New Zealand via trail. You can follow Anna's challenge on Twitter and via her Facebook page. In the second part of this podcast I finish the year [...]
If you're gong to run a long race, you need to run long in training. If you're going to run a fast race, you need to run fast. If your race is on the road, you should prepare on the roads, and if your race is on a trail... yep, you should prepare on the [...]
So yeah, I'm starting a podcast. Back in October I did a couple of audio blogs of Snowdonia and Dublin marathon. This was mainly because I thought that after running them both in one weekend I'd have no energy for typing and this seemed like a good alternative. I had a lot of fun making [...]
I've put off going to the gym for more than the occasional yoga class or a quick play with the weights machines for a while now. I don't hate the gym, but I don't love it. As the weather has got colder and my legs slower, I made several promises with myself to do some [...]
I hate the phrase 'Go hard or go home'. I hate the phrase 'Bikini body'. The words 'guilt-free' when used to describe food get my back up too. There's a lot of things I dislike about how health and fitness is sometimes packaged and sold, so I'm doing something about it. For the past couple [...]
Since SnowDublin, I’ve been trying to balance two things: upping my mileage for January’s ultra and not rushing back into training and injuring myself. A couple of days after Dublin marathon my legs felt fine, good even. But I knew that they were lying to me. They’d run a lot of miles in a [...]