Phil vs Nature: Fundraising for Blood Cancer

Modern Edinburgh is said to have been built on 7 hills. Having run around it, I think the original town planners must have run out of counting fingers at their final construction meeting. "Let's just call it 7." The first upward slope I encountered was when I arrived at the very bottom of the Royal Mile about 6.30 am, and began the slow walk up to the start line with my wife. We were overtaken by a power-walking Lycra clad lady, and then immediately after that by a slightly older man as he ran up the pavement ahead of us. Both had race numbers on, and both looked rather more sprightly than I did. We arrived at the start line in good time, which gave me plenty of opportunity to size up the opposition. First question on my mind was: why is everyone in t-shirts? [Also, why do they say 55 km when the route is actually 57? False advertising!] Second question: which footwear do I need? Third and final: who is going to be at the back with...

I kept it a bit quiet, but a couple of weeks ago I completed a double lap of the Survival of the Fittest event in Nottingham. It was supposed to be short, and a bit of training for the "main event", but once I'd signed up for an extra go it turned out to be an event all on its own! At around 24km, it was an obstacle race but there were plenty of running stretches to get a bit of distance into the legs ahead of the big finale this weekend. The National Watersports Centre was a great setting, and the race took us in and out of their many lakes for some swimming, some climbing, crawling in the mud, a finish slide, and of course - a scaled down version of the famous Rat Race monkey bars! [Speaking of monkey bars... ask Trent Smith to show you his video - now that's epic!] There's not much more to say really, as apart from having to do the course twice, and tackling the motivation to restart back into the cold after the first lap water stop, it wasn...