2020

At the time doing two 100ish mile events in the first six weeks of 2020 seemed excessive. But in retrospect, I’m so glad I did. There haven’t been many adventures since then. Doing the Spine Challenger again was, in retrospect, a mistake. But I finished in challenging conditions while ‘under the weather’, and had some banging hallucinations. The Rovaniemi 150 on the other hand was a fantastic, and tantalising, adventure. Seeing staff wearing masks in duty-free at Helsinki airport on the way home was a harbinger of what was to come.

My main goal for 2020 was an attempt at 400 miles in six days at the Kauhajoki Ultra Running Festival in July. I’d entered, but thankfully not made any travel plans, beyond cancellable accommodation bookings. Lockdown started just as I was about to ramp up my training. I was initially (probably over) cautious, and didn’t do much exercise. Partly because the usually quiet local footpaths were now busy, partly to avoid ending up in hospital was a freak injury and partly because it seemed a good opportunity to do let various long-standing niggles heal and do other thing. With unaccustomed time on my hands, I re-grouted the patio, made a Japanese garden and started doing some sewing (Japanese sashiko).

By Summer I was bored and extended my previous ‘every single road in Chesterfield’ project to ‘every single road within the round Chesterfield walking route’. I also learnt how to set fire to tampons using a fire steel (as preparation for future Arctic races). To give myself something to look forward to I (over-optimistically in retrospect) entered the Lady Anne’s Way ultra in Jan 2021. This was also an excuse for my one fast-packing weekend of the year, from Skipton to Hawes and back. There were far too many people (making no effort to distance themselves from each other) in the towns/villages, and the weather was iffy, but it was still good to get away.

Having knocked off all of the roads around Chesterfield by late Summer, I then started on the footpaths, which were far more pleasant. A family crisis hit in early Autumn though, and anything other than getting by on a day-to-day basis went out the window. In the end, I was glad when the Lady Anne’s Way was postponed, a combination of a complete lack of fitness and being way behind schedule on a big work deadline meant there was no way I could have done it.

Plans for 2021

I’ve no idea! Once the big work deadline is out of the way I want to get back to something resembling systematic training. And that needs a goal. Hopefully a six-day race this Summer might be doable. But quite possibly not; we’ve all done the premature ‘everything will be back to normal by X’ thing too many times by now. In which case I’ll probably have a go at some local-ish long-distance routes (e.g. Peak District Boundary Walk, A Pennine Journey).