Summer 2012 Flashback

Life has been too busy for blogging it seems but now that we are back in the routine of cranking out the winter training I hope to post more regularly. To get started a quick recap of the summer’s main adventures!

Checking out the original Olympic stadium in Athens

June – a month of mad long weekends.

Loutraki Vertical KM – Greece.  Debut for Team Arc’teryx in the World Skyrunning Series. 5^th. Sightseeing run round Athens a highlight too.

Scottish Hill Running Championships – Durisdeer. Funny race, chatting with Prasad Prasad most of the way then he took off up the final climb when I wasn’t paying attention. My first defeat in a Scottish hill race for 2.5 years.

PostFinance Orienteering World Cup –Switzerland. Good sprint training round Zurich then good run in the “B-final” at the WorldCup. Shame to be relegated by not running EOC but made the most of the situation.

SkyGames & Arc’teryx Camp – Pyrenees: Another Vertical KM followed by a great camp with journalists, Arc’teryx team and staff and a run up my first 3000m summit.

Celebrating my Snowdon victory with Tessa - the trophy weighs 7kg!

July – Big Races

WOC – Switzerland. 11^th. An improvement on last year but not a great performance technically. Still hungry for more.

Snowdon International Mountain Race - Wales.  Win! Full write up on AttackPoint.

August & September – Long races

With WOC behind me it was time to look forwards and up. And up and up and up a bit higher. I like to go long after a spring and summer of sprint training.

First Sierre-Zinal –Switzerland. Write up here: 

The last km of the JungfrauMarathon is pretty spectacular.
It's also the only downhill in the race!

Then the Ochil 2000s – Scotland. 20 miles point to point across the home of “Highland Spring” taking in all the 2000 feet summits and Dumyat, one of my favourite hills. I ran strongly to break the record but with a couple better lines I could have gone even quicker.

Finally the Jungfrau Marathon – Switzerland. 21^st, team 4^th. A solid, safe run.  If I was running again I might take a risk and go out faster but I’m happy with how it went this time.  Blow-by-blow account here.

That’s it for now. The next few months will see winter training really kick off, two more Vertical Kilometres to complete the SkyRunning series and then an exciting trip to New Zealand for the start of the 2013 Orienteering World Cup Season!