I'm back...

Well, the Keswick Mountain Festival 50km came and went, blogging duties are complete, and a few more things have happened too...

The race didn't quite go to plan - lots of cramp issues caused me to finish a lot more slowly than I had hoped, and further down the field. It was a beautiful course though, so the fact I was taking longer just gave me more chance to enjoy the views!

Following on from that I changed my race plans, dropping the Ultimate Trails 110k (also in the Lake District), replacing it with the Positive Steps Norfolk 100km, a brand new event from the organiser behind Peddars Way Ultra and Kings Forest Ultra. As I'd already completed both of those events finishing the Norfolk 100km would make me one of the first to complete the Grand Slam of all three.

The race started in Castle Acre, ran along Peddars Way for approximately 20 miles to the coast, and then took the Norfolk Coast Path for it's whole length to Cromer. The weather was cool, breezy, and definitely damp (okay, very wet at times) but that's always preferable to baking sun and scorching temperatures. Overall I was satisfied with my performance, eventually finishing 8th overall, and thus first of the Grand Slammers. As usual it was a well run, friendly, low key event, and one that I (mostly) enjoyed. I struggled after about 70km though, a combination of terrain (4.5 miles of shingle beach for example!), and running a new distance making me slow quite considerably.

However, the mental and physical struggle that took place after those last 30km has caused me to take a step back and consider a few different things...look out for another blog post soon describing how I'm moving forward from this point.

Before that though (and very soon indeed) will be my first kit review (on this site). I enjoyed writing reviews for the Keswick Mountain Festival website, so I'm going to try to keep going with them here.