Challenge Stu

I hope everybody had a fantastic bank holiday weekend. I was lucky enough to spend it on the West coast of Scotland with Lorna and my Mum and Dad. We were in a place called Tayvallich, a little village on an inlet of Loch Sween. A mile's walk takes you to the other side of the peninsula, where from the even littler village of Carsaig you have a direct view across to Jura. It's a stunning place. Tayvallich Bay. After a monster 10 hour drive north (though a stop at Mungrisdale was well worth an extra hour or so), we arrived and set about preparing ourselves for a weekend of adventure. The first step was to inflate my funny old blow-up kayak. I bought it originally to practice for using inflatables at WARC 2013 in Costa Rica, but it has far outlasted my predictions and has been great. There are numerous patches, the non-return valves have died, and it's short fat shape means it waddles around the sea rather than carving swiftly through the waves as a fibreglass boat migh...

A combination of work and adventures in plasterboard means it's taken me longer than intended to get round to writing this, but I wanted to write a quick piece on one of the best skiing holidays I've had in a long time. The season didn't start well. Even compared to last year, when it didn't really snow till mid-January, the start to the season was bad. A March trip sounded like a bad idea, but frankly we needed as long as possible to save up, so March it was! The Daily Mail - for all the best celebrity weight and skiing stories In fact, the snow was not a problem. We stayed at Le Praz, in the Courchevel valley at about 1300m. This worked brilliantly for me, as there was snow above us and sunny valley below us. I skied on Sunday but on Monday decided to take advantage of the weather and headed out for a  long ru n. It was a great adventure, like the long runs I used to do on days off last winter. As then, the speed was low but the climb pretty high! I clock...

It's that strange time of year around Christmas and New Year, when every day feels like a Sunday and you wonder just how much more cheese you can eat. In short, a perfect time to write a blog. And at the turning of the year, 2016 seems the obvious subject, and it's been an interesting year! There's nothing new here though, so I'll keep it brief and try to include some good photos. Please also forgive me for being selfish; this blog is already too long without mention of the amazing achievements of others in 2016, including British Champion Rhys Findlay-Robinson, Nicky Spinks' double Bob Graham round, my brother's epic Frankfurt marathon experience, and all the great achievements of my team mates at events throughout the year. Well OK, only that much mention of them. Cheers for the inspiration. Here we go then... Sunny valleys in the early season Last January I was living and working near St Martin de Belleville in the French Alps. The snow conditions ...

After our winter in the Trois Vallees ski area, Lorna and I are now spending the summer in Chatel, in the Portes du Soleil area. It’s a great ski area, but more importantly at the moment a fantastic summer area. We’ve settled in to our little apartment (read bedsit), which for seasonnaire accommodation is actually pretty huge. As soon as we arrived I started to dream of running around the stunning mountains and ridges surrounding Chatel, and after about two weeks of living here I even found a race to enter! The first of many I hope, and even better it was supported by Scott, so it must be good! Here’s a quick blog about it… “Trail des cretes du Chablais” translates as “Trail of the ridges of the Chablais region”. There were three races on offer, an 18km (1200m ascent), 42km (2900m ascent), and the monster “Le Contrabandier” race, with 5600m ascent over 76km. I don’t think I’ve ever actually entered a race with more ascent. The route would take us from Chatel south toward...

At the end of March, there were still a few things on my "to do this season" list, so in the last few weeks of the season I've been busy ticking most of them off. We're now back in the UK, so it will soon be time to start a new list for the summer season. I'm really excited about the summer - we're going to be working for Alpine Quests, helping to run three chalets in Chatel, in the Portes du Soleil area. The area is probably the most famous mountain biking region in the Alps so I'm planning to do plenty of riding as well as running. We should have plenty of time off so I can hopefully get really fit and also do some racing. Team Accelerate-Scott are continuing to support me which is fantastic, I aim to pay back their generosity with some good results and publicity over the summer season! So, for now, here are a few photos of the last few "ticks"... 10th April: "Do a race" I ran the Defi la Olympe race, from Brides les Bains t...

When we arrived in La Combe I was quickly inspired by the mountains around us and made lots of little plans in my head - I wanted to run up all the peaks around us, and then what about a "La Combe Skyline", or a long one up the valley from Moutiers, and lots more plans... The season started and the early lack of snow meant I did manage to get up quite a few of the nearby summits, but there were two that always evaded me, and after a few weeks, when snow did eventually arrive, they were unfortunately too dangerous to try. Since January I have been unable to look at these two mountains, Creve Tete and Pointe de Diallant, without wondering whether I would be able to get up them before we leave La Combe. I should point out that in summer neither is particularly challenging, yes they both involve about 1500m of ascent each and the summit ridges are a slightly precipitous, but we're not talking mountaineering and I'm sure they are regularly climbed in summer! In winter they...

This weekend I've been up to Scotland to recce a few sections of this year's birthday treat. After the (ahem) success of last year's "29 at 29", the plan for my 30th is shorter but still very exciting: I'm hoping to complete the Scottish 4000s duathlon. The route involves a run up the four 4000ft summits in the Ben Nevis area, a road bike ride of 60 miles, and a second run over the 5 Cairngorm 4000s.   The plan this weekend was to look at as much of the runs as possible, focussing on the second one, and gently enough to aid my continued recovery! I left Sheffield on Friday afternoon, arriving at Oxenholme station at 5ish, where I was joined by Wil and Lucy Spain. We set off north and were soon in Scotland. By Hamilton we were hungry so went to Pizza Hut. Takeaway ordered we nipped to a supermarket to stock up on hill food then returned to collect what turned out to be (thanks to various special offers) rather a lot of pizza! We arrived at the Rothie...