My Favourite Places to Run

It's a grey day in Cardiff (and it's June), I am supposed to be revising for the next few weeks for more exams, and I'm still not quite back to running properly after the Brecon Beacons Ultra. I went for a tester run yesterday, which was ok, but it might be another week of practising for old age, when my knees give up, by cycling for fitness (and barely for fun). Instead, I thought I'd list a few of the places that I would much rather be right now, running.


I've not been to the US or even any of the main European mountain ranges (though my bucket list is pretty much made up of races in these regions), so this list is probably a little different. Even so, I think these are some pretty great places to run! In no particular order...

1. Ilha Grande, Brazil

Ilha Grande is one of those places that runners dream about, even if they didn't know it yet. A small, tropical island about 3 hours from Rio, it has a network of 90km or so of trails pretty much circumnavigating the island (which means it is crying out for an FKT!) and the highest peak reaches up to almost 1000m-given the trail up starts at sea level, you almost have a VK race in the making there!

By basing yourself in the tiny village of Abraao, you have a great range of restaurants, hotels and bars to come back to, right on the beach. However, you can camp on the other beaches around the island, which you can get to by water taxi. Or running, obviously! The island is also great for a bit of cross training- mountain biking, swimming, kayaking, surfing and Stand-up paddle boarding. I had a great 10 days or so here, mixing up some brilliant trail running with beach time, followed by great food and caipirinhas in the evening. More than any place I've been to in the world, it's the place I want to go back to. 

2. Samaipata, Bolivia


I managed to spend 4 weeks in Brazil last summer during the world cup, and despite the obligatory drinking that comes with being party of the Barmy Army, I was still doing some decent running, inspired by the beaches and trails, as described above. I then went to Bolivia with wild ideas of some amazing runs on the Salt flats and in the mountains around La Paz. A combination of tape worms and stolen passports ate into our time and stomachs, meaning by the time I had just a few days left in the country, the best I'd managed was a few runs in smoggy cities and on the banks of the rivers in the Amazon Basin.

That all changed in Samaipata, though. It's a small town, only 3 hours or so from Santa Cruz's international airport, and home to quite a few expats. Set at an altitude of 1600-1800m (for reference: bit less than Iten, similar to Boulder) and with surrounding hills and roads rising another 1000m or so, the dusty roads and network of trails are great for exploring. We rented a villa just outside the town belonging to a lovely German couple, just up the road from an ice cream parlour, and I would follow the tracks up the hills until I was bored/tired, and then fly back down again. 15 minutes away by motorbike there's a set of waterfalls with peaks rising above them and a good set of trails, and there's also plenty of opportunity to rent guides and explore the surrounding mountains. It's not the Bolivia you picture before you go, and if you are used to altitude or have the time to acclimatise in La Paz and its surrounds (at 3500-4500m) then you really can get in some truly wild trekking, but I think what I liked about Samaipata is how unexpected it was. As an aside, the areas of Tarija and Tupiza in the south of the country are also great for running. Tupiza is like the wild west and Tarija is wine country.

3. Southern France

Obviously, the Alps would make most peoples list- Chamonix is a place that I have to go to soon! From my own experiences though, I spent a couple of weeks in a small village called Puivert, between Carcassonne and at the foothills of the Pyrenees, and loved it. It was at a time when I'd just finished my first triathlon (The Slateman in North Wales) and staying in a house a 2 minute walk to a swimming lake massively improved my open water swimming. There were also some great trails, though, with plenty of elevation. The days went something like this: morning open water swim, croissants and coffee, lunchtime swim/run, baguettes and coffee, evening run and swim, baguettes and wine/beer. My running came on massively here, as did my love of croissants, baguettes, coffee and wine.

4. Snowdonia, Wales

Right, enough prancing round in exotic locations in nice weather. Time for some grit. I can't and won't ignore the places where my running saw big improvements. Being based in Cardiff, and now that I have a car, I do get the chance to go and explore the Brecon Beacons. However, it was in Snowdonia last autumn on a university placement that I got my first chance to spend an extended period of time in the mountains. I was logging my biggest mileage and most elevation to date.

I think I did Snowdon's Llanberis path the first afternoon I was there (standard) but then moved onto better, if about 16 metres smaller, things, and I would say the Carneddau mountains provided me with my favourite and most memorable runs. The ascents are hard, the terrain is hard and the descents are hard. Proper mountain running.

5. Lake District

Obviously The Lakes has to make the list. I've been going to the Lakes since I was about 4 and Skiddaw was the first mountain I ever ran up . Even when I didn't run 'properly', I would run up Latrigg and look out across Derwent water, so that view over Keswick has to be one of my favourites. These days, it's a long trek from South Wales, but I was up there earlier this year for the Keswick Mountain Festival, and I'll be running the 3x3000 80k later this year, with a recce weekend planned before that. I always look forward to going back.

Also, BGR is obviously on the bucket list...one day.

An honourable mention has to go to my home in Yorkshire, but I think Yorkshire would be at the top of everyone's list, it's too much of an obvious choice! I think I'll write about that at some point in the future. In the next 12 months I will be going to East Africa and to Nepal, and I also have an eye on Tranvulcania 2016, so I'm pretty sure this list will lengthen!

 

MCN Brecon Beacons Ultra

MCN Round 2 Brecon Beacons Ultra

42 miles, 9000ft
5th place, 7:37

I wrote a review of this race over at RunUltra (here), so if you're after a more detailed description of the course and route, check that out, or see the event website for more information about this race or any of the great races the MCN team put on.

The Training (skip ahead if this bit's boring)

This was the longest ultra I've ran, so I'm really pleased with my time and position. In my first ultra at the Endurancelife South Devon, I'd started strongly (classic rookie mistake) and been 5th at the 20 mile point, but had faded really badly and by the time I finished I was just wanting it to be over. I'd then ran the Round 1 Black Mountains marathon in March, mainly to practice my nutrition and build confidence in a race situation, and finished 3rd.

The weeks leading up to Round 2 had been pretty perfect in terms of training. I'd stupidly signed up to a race which fell just after a fairly heavy exam period, so I was having to fit training in around revising all day, every day for a good 5 or 6 weeks. This meant I wasn't sacrificing mileage but I was sacrificing specificity and time on feet, as even though I live in Cardiff and am only about 45 minutes away from the mountains, I didn't have the time to drive up to the Beacons, so a lot of my running was in flat Bute Park, with my long runs featuring a considerable amount of flat trails and roads on my way out to the hilly forest trails near Caerphilly. The Garth hill was probably my saviour. 3 or 4 times a week during revision, I cycled out on the Taff Trail to the Garth, and did hill repeats up there. In a 5 or 6 mile run, I'd run up and down the slopes of the Garth three times, with the hill repeats offering an average gradient of 15%. All in all each run gave me just shy of 2000ft of elevation. Fortunately, these sessions coincided with never-seen-before-and-surely-never-seen-again period of constant sunshine in Wales, for 2 whole weeks, in April, which made the 6am starts much easier. The fact that I was slowly but surely acquiring a pretty great vest tan was definitely a bonus, if not the main reason I was out there.

The last 3 weeks before the race featured my biggest ever training week. I'm fairly new to running 'seriously', and 12 months ago I was used to running 30-40 miles a week, with a lot of cross training thrown in. After a training period of 50-80 mile weeks, in the first week of May I threw in an 87 mile week with 16000ft of elevation, back at home in Yorkshire, and followed that week up with a 4th place at the Keswick Mountain Festival trail race. 2 solid weeks of tapering meant I felt pretty good going in to the Brecon Ultra.

The Race

My mate Cal was running the 10 mile race, and was going to stick around after he finished for moral support if I was dead at the finish, and to provide chocolate milk if I did require resuscitation.

The race starts with a nice easy 3 miles along the canal, so the temptation to start fast was strong. Luckily, I started near the back because I prioritised getting a nice photo over starting near the front, so I missed the chance to get to the start line. In hindsight this meant that I saved energy on those first few miles. By the first hill I could see the front 4, which meant I had a good view of them running off course and veering right before the summit of Tor y Foel. I wasted a bit of time stopping to check the route map with the confusion, so the gap between me and the 3 guys running together stayed about the same by the time they'd realised their mistake. The leader, Andre Jonsson went off course for longer before realising his mistake, though he caught me frighteningly quickly and passed me within only a few miles of the wrong turn. He won by over an hour and is clearly a top top runner- it was actually pretty exciting to watch how good he was on the trails. I've since seen that he has a few video blogs about trail running- the advice he offers clearly works.

At mile 10, there's a good 6 or 7 mile uphill through the bogs up onto the ridge, which saps your energy. You're then rewarded with a nice descent down the motorway that is the footpath from the main car park for Pen y Fan. A few people I spoke to afterwards complained about how busy this path was with people walking up, but I loved the chance to feel like Kilian as I flew from rock to rock, doing my best to avoid being the bowling ball to the pins that were groups of schoolchildren. Disaster averted, but I clearly got carried away as it took me a few hundred metres back on the flat to regain a normal running stride. I stopped to refill at the next checkpoint, with the guys from Imperial trail team in 2nd and 3rd a couple of minutes ahead, and the Swedish winner presumably already finished. I turned round to look back up towards the road and saw about 5 or 6 runners a matter of seconds behind me. I had to reassure myself that it was too early in the race to matter, but it felt ominous. I eventually got overtaken by the 1st female and 2nd overall (who I later found out to be Beth Pascall, who I've heard interviewed on Talk Ultra and is a pretty great runner) on the descent back across the A470.

The next 5 miles so was basically up a mountain, down a mountain, up a mountain again. I found myself with the guys who would eventually finish just behind me on the climb up from Storey Arms to Pen y Fan, the summit of which more or less led us to mile 26. I had a bit of a gap by the time we'd descended back into the valley and started the long climb up to Cribyn, though Tim Woodier, who finished very strongly for 3rd overall, caught me about halfway up. He climbed with me for a few minutes, which was just enough time for me to know that he's a really nice guy and so it was hard to begrudge him overtaking me with an incredibly fast powerhike on the scamble up Cribyn, at about 32 miles.

It was a relief to clear the summit of Cribyn. I'd texted Cal just before that climb, not really thinking about how big of a climb lay ahead, and told him I was on mile 30 so I would probably be another 2 hours or so, depending on how many miles over the  "40ish" miles described by MCN was. 20 minutes and probably only 200 metres later, I was still on mile 30. I never texted Cal to readjust my time, which was a little bit selfish on my part but probably indicates how much I hated the world at that point, and how much I regretted being a self proclaimed "lover of hills". From the summit of Cribyn, of course, everything was right with the world again, and I felt pretty good along the next 6 or 7 miles. 3rd place was long gone and I was fairly comfortable, a couple of glances behind reassured me 4th was probably safe...

I had a bit of a shocker in the last few miles, though. We had a couple of miles descent down to Talybont reservoir, then a few miles of rolling in to the finish back along the Taff Trail and canal path. The biggest annoyance of my race came at the reservoir, when I seemingly crashed for no reason. It wasn't tiredness, muscle fatigue or lack of energy, just simple dehydration. I hadn't had any water since Cribyn and there wasn't any water at a checkpoint at mile 37, as the map suggested, so it had been a while without water, which was a mistake on my part and shows how easy it is to stop thinking straight as you tire. If it hadn't been for the fact that we ran past a reservoir, I would probably have been OK. However, running alongside that giant glass of cold water was really difficult, and I actually stopped to look over the wall to see how easy it would be to just take some. It was just after that point that I got overtaken by the guy who finished fourth, Jonathan Bamber, who found me walking the very small, final climb on the Taff Trail. He stopped to check I was OK and offered to run in with me, which is a great example of everything you hear about how great ultra runners are. I told him to head on without me though, and by the time I was running on flat again my heart rate had slowed back down and I felt good again, which allowed me to run in the final few miles relatively comfortably.

This was yet another great event by the Might Contain Nuts team. A big thanks to the team and all the marshals for their amazing effort, and well done to everyone who ran this race. It was the furthest and hardest run I've done, (which still won't be that far compared to a lot of people!), but it's early days so I'm pleased that I managed a step up in distance and difficulty and was still able to finish relatively strongly (strong desire to jump in a reservoir at mile 38 aside).


My next big race will be the 3x3000 80k Ultra in October, so I have a few weeks of rest and recovery before thinking about starting my next training cycle. I had felt a slight niggle in my heel from about mile 15, which I felt the whole way round. It didn't affect my performance too much, but it's fair to say I've struggled with walking this last week- a bit of peroneal tendonitis which is thankfully showing signs of fading, but it's cycling only for me for a couple of weeks until that fully heals.