This track marathon in Braintree next weekend is looming over me. I am blaming my friend Cathy! Even routes made out of two half marathons challenge my run to have fun sensibilities. The track marathon is made out of 105,5 (one-hundred-and-five point five!) 400m laps. I am even challenged to count to 105. “But they count for you”, Cathy argued. Not realising that this is not really the point I said: “Ok then, I sign up.” Which I did. And only…
Boy, do these YouTube clips take time to produce! I completely underestimated the task. I am learning a lot, but with each new clip, I do something I have not done before, which eats up more time. So, here we go, clip No 6, from last Sunday’s run all through London. It starts slow, me being in bed mulling over where to get motivation from and remembering a TED Talk How endurance athletes are using the power of the now.…
There is this term “experimental tourism”, which captures the idea of just roaming around foreign places exploring without a specific destination. That works for running, too. And with the dwMap app for Garmin, you can do both, roam around unknown places and still don’t get totally lost and be back home in time. I show you how in the clip and also show some iPhone footage that went horribly wrong. Enjoy, subscribe, like, dislike, comment or ask questions. Do you…
Here comes a new clip from my Sunday run with running buddy Hakeem. The Alban Way is not a new lifestyle mantra, but an actual path that follows an old disused train line to St Albans, a town whose history goes back to Roman times and is named after Alban, the first British saint. They have a nice Abbey there, which can also be seen in the video.
Do three published videos already make a channel? Well, three is better than none I guess and the last one shows a full minute of footage me running through London. Yeah. I got the idea for this a few days ago, when after a major Facebook mishap I decided to say goodbye to Mark Zuckerberg’s social network monster. You suddenly have a lot of spare time If you can’t spend it scrolling through random posts and updates. So here it…
This Country to Capital (C2C) finisher photo comes a bit as a surprise. It looks unexpectedly positive and does not fit with the more gloomish race report. How did I manage to produce this smile and even look rather together than undone? A mystery. Yet, I have to say, that the dark thoughts about the race have lifted a bit and I do feel like going out for a run now. The thoughts of giving up running, which I entertained…
Here I stand in Wendover at the start line, 45 miles ahead of me and only little hope that I would actually finish this race, the Country to Capital Ultra from Wendover to Little Venice, London. My biggest concern was moving forward in cold temperatures for around 8 hours, getting eventually cold myself, especially when it turns out that I can’t run anymore and have to walk. The man flu that had spoilt my last two races in December was finally…
It is completed: my fiftieth marathon, in Malaga, one week after my trauma in Dorset. Despite having felt almost hundred percent recovered on the day, it turned out to be an experience in two parts: the good one, and the bad and ugly one. Let’s start with the good part.The good: It was one of those build-ups that are almost perfect. A smooth arrival at Malaga, getting your bearings (and race number) stress free, having an enjoyable afternoon cycling down…
I am getting ready to face my fiftieth marathon. Number 49, the ultramarathon in Dorset last week, proved that even when running more marathons than probably the average runner, starting and finishing can never be taken for granted. This is what I love about the the distance: it makes you more aware of how much you are dependent on grace, because many things are outside your control. I am very excited though, finally feeling better after being affected for two…
Coming back to Dorset for running an ultramarathon, four years after having done the marathon distance in 2013, did not feel good. Don’t get me wrong, Dorset and the Jurrasic Coast Path, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, is an absolute stunner. In 2013, I described it with “what paradise must look like” despite being the most difficult route (and experience) I had ever done. The 2017 revisit was overshadowed by health concerns. Normally I don’t do colds, but 10…
For the last six years, every new marathon medal just went on top of the others, burying the older ones under a pile of newer ribbons and metal. It was time to dig them all out for a little bit of marathon medal indulgence. Here is the documenting picture:They are 48 in total and arranged in strict order: Top left is the oldest and bottom right the latest. Hopefully, I will get to 50 by end of this year. Next…
So, here we are again: Five years after doing Athens as my 4th overall marathon, it was time to give it another go (as my 48th). It was a weird mix of going down memory lane, finding some things are not how I remembered them and re-discovering this spectacular event and place all over again. Despite common runner’s knowledge that because of the hilly route Athens makes it a rather tough one, I did not remember it as being so…
One of the great things about running marathons is that it can be very social, while doing running itself is often a rather individual thing. When running the Frankfurt Marathon today I was feeling this connection with the running community more than usual. It was the 8th marathon I did with running mate Michael. Frankfurt is his home turf and to make it easier for me I was offered to join his company’s running team. Some conference rooms in a…
The day did not start great: waking up to a weather forecast that has stayed consistent for a week and shows that you will get completely soaked from 8am on, including thunderstorms, is never great at marathon day. Well, I sent up one of those desperate “God, pleeease!?” prayers (if someone can change the weather last minute, it must be him) and got up, still not sure how to get to the shuttle buses that would bring us 30 kilometres…
In 2013 I had my first attempt preparing for an ultra race. Despite best intentions it somehow did not happen. Now, four years later, I am there again. Still not sure why with all my running it seems to be so bloody difficult to do what all ultra runners do and keep going, However, I should appreciate that I did increase distances, had longer-than-marathon training runs and my first ultra race in form of a six hours challenge. So I signed…
