#RunFrodoRun – Holland, Belgium and Germany (approx 290 miles)

My ride on the Bucklebury Ferry to continue my journey to Mordor!

Day 8: Bradfield to Hook of Holland

The ring grew heavier (or I was getting more tired. It’s hard to tell…) as I approached Harwich for the ferry on Sunday morning; one week precisely since the Manchester Marathon.

I was looking forward to a day of doing nothing. The sun had finally come out after almost a full week of rain, so sitting by the window was pleasant and I had eight solid hours to just sit there and relax.

#RunFrodoRun – UK Section (approx 260 miles)

Not a lot of people know this, but being in possession of the ring of power in today’s day and age is a real pain; everything’s a bit different now.

Firstly, there’s more traffic and things out there now to get in the way.  Secondly, finding Mordor is a bit more challenging now everything is a bit more built up.

Eventually, after some careful, considered minutes of searching for stuff in google maps, I found Mordor. It turns out it’s just a small area on the outskirts of Essen in Germany. No idea what it was yet, but it was indisputably labelled ‘Mordor’. So off I went with an aim to run as much of this route as possible.

Hi all, Samwise here (Not Dan as the blog post entry would have you believe) – while Dan (Frodo) is off galavanting around Middle-Earth, I wanted to provide a quick update from last weekend I’ve only just had chance to write up (sorry it’s a little late…)

I assume most of you are familiar with the story of the Lord of the Rings? If not, this whole adventure will make very little sense and will be full of references that may confuse and confound you.

There are plenty of myths flying about all over the place when it comes to running; mainly vocalized by non-runners with various degrees of truth and hilarity to them. However, I also hear two very distinct, performance hindering myths from regular runners, and they both surround the subject of TRAINING as a runner.

• MYTH #01 – “Runners don’t need to train legs because of all the running we do”
• MYTH #02 – “Runners don’t need to train upper body because you don’t need that for running”

Week 1 and the UK section of my journey to Mordor!

Why am I doing this?

It’s a good question… Essentially, I am looking at running literally hundreds of miles, straight on from the Manchester Marathon, which other than a ferry into Holland, will all be on foot. [MORE DETAILS HERE]. Plus the Lord of the Rings theme is only going to serve to make this more uncomfortable. I appreciate people might think I’m being a bit weird.

Sure-footed as a mountain hobbit!

“Run Frodo, RUN!! … for real this time.”

This fundraising challenge has actually been around two years in the making in a way; following on from running to John O’Groats from Lands End in March, 2014. I remember being in a hotel in Wick on the penultimate day, when I got a message on social media from my friend Scott, showing me this thing you could do at the time on Google Maps where you plug in walking directions from the Shire to Mordor, and it would give you some smart-ass response along the lines of “use caution” as “one does not simply walk into Mordor“. Or something like that.

“What would you want to move to Buxton for??”

Border between Cheshire and Derbyshire

Errwood Reservior

This is a question I’ve been asked quite a bit since I moved here four months ago, back in October. I think people mean well when they ask this, but there’s usually some genuine confusion attached due to the difficulty I’ve seemingly  placed upon myself that many would view as unnecessary, so I’ll do my best to try and explain…

Pavilion Gardens, Buxton

Geese

The Gritstone Trail is a national trail route that takes you from Kidsgrove in Staffordshire, to Disley in Cheshire; 35 miles of very green Peak District terrain and over 5,000 feet of elevation along the way.

Earlier this year, I discovered via the Welsh V3K and Snowdon Trail Marathon, that I am not quite the mountain goat I thought I might be… Running up a mountain is hard, running DOWN a mountain is crippling! It’s something I intend to work on, but mountains by nature are just that little bit more vertical than my body likes to work with.

How Running Becomes Therapy

“How do you run so far?”

“Don’t you get bored?”

Two questions I can safely say I have been asked a LOT. The first one is highly complex and has a very long, physiological answer. I suppose the real question then, and the answer to the second one in the process would be “Why do you run so far?” – So I’ll have a go at that one…

Me at the Peaks Skyrace, 2015 on the weekend

It was back in 2013 when I first started entering trail races. I decided that marathons were good fun (yes, you read that right), but I wanted to push myself with increasingly tougher terrains and route profiles.

Trail marathons I found were definitely my thing. I took to them straight away and noticed I was ‘reasonably’ good at them too.

All that summer, I found myself in the top 5 of events I entered, regardless of how little training I did. I never won any, but I had a couple of 2^nd’s to my name and a 3^rd place in one of the Hardmoors trail marathons. All evidence was pointing towards me being pretty big news…