Challenge Stu

Sunday was the catchily titled “UKA 100km championships, incorporating Scottish 100km championships and Anglo-Celtic Plate”. This essentially meant that I spent the day running around a park in Perth quite a long way behind the owners of some lovely tracksuits. It was the first 100km road race I had done, and the first lap race. It was very different to off road ultras in a few ways... On Saturday night we had a race briefing by a man from Scottish Athletics, telling us about the course and how the day would work. This man was obviously important in this sort of circle, and knew everyone’s name but mine! As the teams dispersed I set my tent up on the startline (in order to confuse them), and went to sleep feeling a bit scared. Sunday morning started an hour earlier than planned due to clever mobile phone / BST issues, but eventually the national teams from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England arrived and set up their tents and flags. I had some beans and put my shiny new shoes on read...

Tomorrow I'm off towards (via a few other places) Perth, where on sunday I am taking part in the UKA 100km championships. The format is 42 laps of a 2.4 km course, so a new type of race for me! I'm a bit nervous of that distance on flat road but it will be exciting, especially with national teams in the same race. Before that though, something altogether scarier - a best man speech...

Apart from the last-minute HPM last weekend, yesterday was my first ultra of the year... Haworth Hobble / Wuthering Hike. My first race for a while for Pudsey Pacers, and it was great to see two other Pacers (Russell and Darryl Stead) taking on their first ultras (and both running well!). Lucy Harris from Accelerate also ran, going from none to two ultras in two weeks! I nearly missed the start as there was a loooong queue for the toilet. I was running towards the startline when I heard the clock strike and hundreds of runners set off towards me! I quickly got to where they had started, turned around and we we're off! As everyone knew, the pace was high. For 32 miles the guys at the front went off FAST! I stuck in a group just behind them, something around 15 - 20th. I recognised Duncan Harris and a couple of others at the front, and Martin Beale was in the same group as me. I won't write a huge long report, but the race went pretty well. I had a bad patch just before the ...

One of the guys I'm racing the Fastnet with in August has his own charity challenge, sailing a dinghy from Cowes to Cherbourg... 85 miles for the Sail4Cancer charity. More details here . Jon Burgess and "Serene Affair"

FRIDAY On friday afternoon I was listening to a man talk about the most suitable materials for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells when I was awakened by a vibration in my right leg. At the end of the lecture I checked to see what this vibration had been caused by, and 6 hours and a lot of food later found myself with Martin Beale, Tim Laney and Martin Humphreys running out of Edale village hall to start the High Peak Marathon... The HPM is a 42 mile fell race run by members of the Sheffield University High Peak Club. Start times for running teams are from 11pm, with the fastest teams starting last. Martin, Martin, Tim and another Martin (Indge) had run well last year and finished second, so only "Flippers Gang" were left in the hall as we set off. We were soon catching slower teams as we climbed up to Hollins Cross, over Lose and Win hills and off towards Moscar. At this point we were third but still had quite a few teams ahead of us. We were running well and the weather was pretty go...