MY 2023 GOALS…
I am still trying to nail all my 2022 goals (see further below) but am also adding the following:
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Winter Paddy Buckley FKT
I reach Rhosydd quarry, fifty miles and sixteen hours in, it is the dead of night. A scary enough place in daylight, where young men worked and died, deep in the hillside tunnels. Slate ruins loom silently around me. The moon shadows play tricks on my eyes, ghosts are closing in from all around.
I’ve reached a crossroads. If I turn right, down the hill, towards my home town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, I could get in my warm, safe bed, and make all this end.
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Paddy Buckley Winter Round – For Chris Smith
The sunshine begins to fade on the empty Glyderau plateau. As the otherworldly rocks, like kryptonite, draw long shadows across the moonscape, the sky and the stones all yawn in a deep yellow glow. I’m all alone, running up to the summit of Glyder Fawr. A sunray breaks through the vanilla sky, finds my brain, and floods it, with a long forgotten memory, from decades ago…
London Loadup – Week 5. National Cross Country
I do not want to run the National Cross Country champs this year. I don’t want to do the 3 and a half hour drive. I don’t want to run around in the mud. I’m tired. I’d rather stay here with my family. But the problem of being an athlete/ coach, is you have to lead by example. I wouldn’t be very happy if one of my athletes said they didn’t do a race that had been in their schedule for months, because they couldn’t be bothered.
Ladywell 10,000m. 2019
I am driving on the way to the race when an extremely rare white rhino steps onto the road, so I swerve, lose control, and smash through a barrier, off the Golden Gate bridge and into the river, where I have to break free from my sinking Delorean (purple) and swim to the bank, chased all the way by robot piranhas. I make it to the race just in time, but I’m a bit tired and wet.
London Marathon – Week 10 of 10
This is the final week of my build up to London Marathon. I think I can remember off the top of my head how many miles I’ve done for the past 9 weeks: