Time and curiosity is all you need
I was watching a video of my good friend Charlie Dark recently, talking about how he set up the RunDemCrew, his ideas, the basis of entrepreneurship and his philosophy on life. So much of this resonates with how I feel about co-founding Freestak and Like the Wind magazine…
I run marathons. Everything is a result of that.
My first love – as far as running is concerned – is, and will always be, the marathon. When I started running, I didn’t really know about anything else. The marathon was the pinnacle of running as far as I knew and once I had run my first…
Finding intensity
Recently I posted about happiness (or lack thereof) and I have to say I was pretty overwhelmed by the response I got to that – friends contacted me by the dozen to offer advice and ask if they could help (to those who asked if they could help,…
Avoiding a doping problem in marathon running? Might be too late.
I just read an astonishing – and very disappointing – statistic relating to elite level marathon runners: Thirty-six Kenyans have been confirmed as failing [performance enhancing drug] tests in the past two years. And probably the saddest thing is that I’m not at all surprised. The reasons why…
Running for my Nan
A couple of weeks ago my Nan – the wonderful Nellie – passed away. She was 97 years old. I was very, very sad and despite her amazing age, it came as quite a shock. Born in 1915, my Nan has seen an awful lot and was an…
Training, racing and time on the feet: why slower marathons are as challenging as faster ones.
In the last two weeks, I have run two marathons. That makes it three marathons since 21 April, i.e. five weeks ago. And I have learned from all of them. But the lessons have been very different, certainly between the first marathon and the last two. The first…
Gold medal or Palme d’Or? Why running form is less important than running more.
This morning, as I was sitting eating breakfast, a thought popped into my head about the nature of competition. My wife had cooked eggs and we were eating them with slices of gruyere cheese. But not any old gruyere cheese – award winning gruyere. My wife is Swiss,…
Book review: Feet in the Clouds by Richard Askwith
One of the things I love about running is that at it’s heart is a purity that doesn’t exist in many other sports. There is not much that is contrived about trying to get from one place to another as fast as you can. There are no balls,…
The storm is coming
Think back if you will, to the point before your marathon preparation cycle started. Let’s take November last year for example. Whether or not you raced last autumn, it is highly likely that last November you were not training for anything specific. Wasn’t that a lovely time? Blissful…
Some things that a runners should never do (and how to avoid doing them)
This is a post inspired by my own stupidity. I run quite a lot and it is all too easy for me to forget to do things that help to keep me up-and-running: things that I know I should do, but don’t. So today, when I got back…