Spine blogs: 2015

link to main Spine race blog index


Spine Race
Ian Bowles: 1, 2
Alzabeta Benn
Frances Britain
(about) Joao Colaco
Joe Faulkner, kit etc
Michael Frenz
Iain Harper
Sean Hernon
Tim Laney
Dave Lee
Richard Lendon: 1, 2
Paul Orton: 1, 2, 3
Pavel Paloncy
Mark Rawlinson
Alan Rumbles
(about) Andreas Siebert
Jim Tinnion
Paul Wilson

Spine Challenger
Andrew Ferguson
Sarah Fuller
Janson Heath
Daniel Hendriksen
Clare Holdcraft, kit
Maxine Lock:
1, 2
Phil Owen
Robert Jones
Alan Pepper
Marcus Scotney

Support crew
Jim Imber
Stu Westfield

Previous years
2014
2012 and 2013

2015 and beyond


The only race I’ve entered so far for 2015 is the
Thames Ring 250 in June. Having finished the Spine and T184 in 2014, I’d like to add to my collection of ‘longest single stage races in the UK’ finishes. I’m not yet sure what my goals for it are. Obviously to finish. But beyond that I’m wary, after over-ambitious goals for T184 left me feeling ‘meh’ about what was actually a decent finish. The main thing I need to do is work out how to do a better job of sleeping. I’ve just ordered a pile of books on the science of sleeping from Amazon...

I’d been hoping to do the Rovaniemi 150 in February, as a step towards one of the long Arctic races. But the timing-tabling gods didn’t look favourably upon me. I’ve got two lectures on Fridays this semester, which makes taking a Friday off to travel to Finland impossible. I’ll carry on buying Winter kit when it’s cheap, and hopefully the timing will work out next year. It’s not the end of the world though, in particular since I haven’t yet worked out how I’m going to manage to take a couple of weeks off in Feb/March for one of the longer races...

Another idea was the
Viking Way ultra (which has a cut-off which would seriously test my limits). However it looks like it’s not happening year, so instead I’m thinking about doing the DB24 24 hour trail race as a warm up for the Thames Ring.

Post Thames Ring, it depends how I recover. But I’m pondering the 48 hour race at the
British ultrafest in August.