Photo courtesy of the Rotary Club of Matlock’s website.
In what felt like such a bizarre situation, 2016 so far had not featured any competitive events for me. I’d covered a lot of mileage, plus I did run at the Manchester Marathon in April, BUT, so far none of this mileage was at competitive pace; I’d not yet had the chance to test my top speed against anybody except myself. It was time to get back on the horse!
Unfortunately, my horse was a bit lame.
Combining Personal Training with a Running Club…
There are a lot of running clubs and groups about these days, which is great! Running as a sport has a great community base, and accessable to pretty much anybody willing to put the effort in.
My trail running group at Teggs Nose 🙂
The main focus for this club is the ‘training‘ element; training SMART to match your goals and building a body that is more resistant to injury.
My ride on the Bucklebury Ferry to continue my journey to Mordor!
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.
unFrodoRun – 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.
Week 1 and the UK section of my journey to Mordor!
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!
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.
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.
