Challenge Stu

I first ran the Fellsman in 2008 in a time of about 18 hours. It was by far the hardest race I'd ever run and I was in awe of the winner, Mark Hartell. After winning the race most years since 1995, this was the final year of Mark's domination, and 2009 saw Jez Bragg claim his first victory. That year my time was 16:21 and I still could not comprehend the speed of the guys at the front - I remember running after grouping in the later stages of the race, talking about how the leaders would get back in time to have dinner in the pub while we were still miles from the finish. So with all that in my not-too-distant memory it felt a bit strange to be chatting to Jez as we climbed Gragareth this year. Soon after the start six of us had pulled away from the main group on the way up Inglebrough: Adam Perry, Kim Collison, Jez Bragg, Stuart Mills, a guy who's name I'm afraid I don't know (Mr. Salomon will do for now), and I. We jogged up the track and walked the steep...

Last weekend saw the annual outdoors-fest that is Sheffield Adventure Film Festival (ShAFF) take place at the Showroom cinema in Sheffield. As always it was a fantastic and inspirational event, and I'm very proud to have been a ShAFF ambassador once again (just look at the other people on the list !). On Sunday I gave a talk with superfast ultra runner Marcus Scotney. As well as being able to run really quickly, Marcus is a sport therapist and the director of the Accelerate Performance Centre, the newly re-vamped and rebranded part of the Accelerate / Holywell sports therapy centre. It's the centre that is now looking after us supported athletes, which is fantastic news and I'm very excited to be involved! Marcus and I spoke about running your first ultra and covered topics such as food, kit, planning, training and the mental approach. Marcus certainly knows more about most of these topics so I'm afraid he had to do most of the work, but I contributed a bit, and lear...