Challenge Stu

Last weekend I was privelaged to support Nicky Spinks in her most recent of a long line of incredible achievements. It was a great day, and resulted in Nicky's lowering of her own ladies' Bob Graham Round record to 18:06. To put it into perspective, many people who try to get round the "BG" only scrape under the 24 hour time limit by a few minutes, after years of training and hard work. Last Sunday Nicky started at 4am, from Moot Hall. The first leg was supported by Konrad Rawlik, Jasmin Paris and Jon Gay (the "Scottish contingent") and was completed on time without too much drama, apart from a cut hand. This was apparently quite deep, but was wrapped up at Threlkeld and Nicky continued on schedule. Waiting for the start of Leg 3 By the time she reached my alotted starting point at the end of leg 2, Dunmail Raise, she was within a few minutes of the planned 17:15 (!) schedule and looking good. After a couple of minutes stop and a quick re-...

Some people say you should be careful what you wish for, and it occurred to me a couple of times on Wednesday that I might've got a bit carried away with my birthday wish for "a long day's run around the hills"... I was attempting to run around the highest 29 hills in the Peak District, on my 29th birthday. The idea of running a hill for each year of your age is an old one, I think it's even how the Bob Graham Round originally came about. I decided a while ago I'd try to plan something similar in the Peaks, and found a list of the highest hills. It's an interesting list, there are a few hills on there I hadn't even heard of (nevermind been up!), and some you would imagine might be there are missing... I set about plotting them on a map (and some bits of paper where the map didn't quite reach), and to my surprise and delight did not end up with a random splattering of hills everywhere, it almost looked like a route... So that was that then! A...