It's Only Running...

Cumbria Way Ultra 30 14/09/2019 Short version: 9th woman; 18th overall; 6:10:06. I am throwing up. This isn’t the first time I’ve vomited in Carlisle; Thursday nights in the Front Page during the late 1990s, where you could drink yourself blind on vodka for under a fiver, were more often than not to blame. There were a few sticky footed, tequila fuelled nights in Buskers that may have also ended in less than glamorous circumstances. I was not one of those clean living, athletic teenagers. However, this particular puking episode is happening on a cycle path on the outskirts of the city and has been caused by a rather less hedonistic tipple - namely chocolate soya* milk. More accurately, the ill advised combination of that and cola flavoured gels, which I can no longer stomach because it’s been a warm day and they’ve become deeply unpleasant as a result. That, coupled with the fact that I set off from Keswick almost 6 hours and 28 miles ago, and I’m a bit fucked. One last heave and I th

I had to do a personality test at work recently - one of those profiles where you’re assigned a colour. I’m yellow, apparently, which means I’m an extrovert who’s all about fun, enjoyment, and inspiring others. This won’t surprise regular readers (all three of them) who know I’m nothing if not a ray of fucking sunshine, always ready with motivational bullshit, and generally full of good vibes. I suppose I do prioritise my ‘enjoyment’ over many other aspects of my life, most notably housework and conscientious parenting, but I stopped short of asking the workshop facilitator (not writing that with a straight face, promise) whether it still counts as fun when it involves repeatedly shitting in bushes, bowking on your cheese and pickle sarnie, and getting your husband to do a thorough tick sweep when you’re done? Just because your mates are weirdos, etc. So having established that my idea of fun is quite possibly a little different from what most people understand by the term, when I

West Highland Way Race 2019. If I was being polite and opting to flex my vocabulary a little bit, I might say that my race reports are characterised by self-deprecating humour. In my normal everyday idiom, what I mean is that I take the piss out of myself for cheap laughs. This isn’t hard; to utilise a lazy cliché, you might even compare it to shooting fish in a barrel – I’m a pathetically easy target. If we could get the goblet incident* out of the way in paragraph one, my husband correctly guessing that I was the cause of the sound of shattered crystal and the attendant, horrifying, collective intake of breath that followed, without actually witnessing the heinous act, should give some indication of the level of fecklessness at which I operate on a regular basis. Ultra race reports are prime fodder for this approach. I like to think of them as the antithesis of your typical Instagram account, where legs are always fresh, smiles are broad, outfits on point, running is a medium