Off the clock
Most of what I do outside work involves a bike, a pair of trail shoes, cold water and Scottish weather. Below are the events I keep coming back to: mostly in the Tweed Valley and the Lake District, with a few closer to home in Edinburgh.
Lake District, England
Widely reckoned the hardest one-day ride in the UK: Kirkstone, Honister, Newlands, Whinlatter, Hardknott, Wrynose and Blea Tarn in a single loop, with Hardknott's 30% ramp saved for mile 94. My two biggest climbing days on record, by some margin.
Pitlochry, Perthshire
The UK's original closed-road sportive: 85 miles of Highland Perthshire with the traffic taken away, out around Loch Rannoch under Schiehallion and back down to Pitlochry. The fastest average speed I have held over that distance.
Peebles, Scottish Borders
Closed roads through the upper Tweed basin, over the Wall of Talla, one of Scotland's nastiest climbs, then past Megget and St Mary's Loch and the long swooping descent off the Devil's Beef Tub into Moffat before the run home to Peebles.
Glentress, Tweed Valley
A November ultra out of Glentress: up through the forest, along the Tweed railway path, then out onto the Southern Upland Way and open moorland at Minch Moor. Eighty-five per cent unpaved, and by mid-November most of that is mud. My longest run to date.
Glentress, Tweed Valley
The winter and February trail races, run on the Tower Trail and the black-graded mountain bike routes: hard-packed gravel giving way to twisting singletrack, with around 780 m of climbing packed into a half marathon.
Edinburgh
The fast one. A flat coastal course along the Firth of Forth out to Musselburgh, with no climbing to hide behind, which makes it an honest test of where the form actually is. My quickest half by twenty minutes.
Cramond, Edinburgh
A five-mile sunset run out across the tidal causeway, over the island and round the beach at the back of it. The cut-off is set by the tide rather than the timekeepers: the marshals walk back in just ahead of the water. Professionally speaking, I approve of a race whose rules are written by the hydrodynamics.
I study the sea for a living, and I swim in it for the rest. Most weeks that means Wardie Bay, a few minutes from the house on the Firth of Forth, in whatever the water happens to be doing that morning. Everything else is opportunistic: lochs, sea lochs, and anywhere I find myself standing next to water that is not actively dangerous. The first photograph is February, on the East Lothian coast, which tells you most of what you need to know about the standard.
The best ones are never planned. The second photograph is An Lochan Uaine, the green loch in the Cairngorms, on a twenty-five kilometre trail run in November that I stopped halfway through for a swim. My note against that day, which I stand by, reads: recharging the soul: run, hike, swim.
Every recorded kilometre since 2014, by year and sport.
2020 is the outlier: lockdown, and nowhere to go but out on the bike.
Kilometres. Running was not recorded before October 2020. * 2026 runs to 26 August.
| Year | Cycling | Running | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 5,512 | — | 5,512 |
| 2015 | 4,185 | — | 4,185 |
| 2016 | 4,392 | — | 4,392 |
| 2017 | 3,648 | — | 3,648 |
| 2018 | 3,469 | — | 3,469 |
| 2019 | 4,909 | — | 4,909 |
| 2020 | 8,622 | 62 | 8,684 |
| 2021 | 4,931 | 824 | 5,755 |
| 2022 | 4,321 | 1,339 | 5,660 |
| 2023 | 4,999 | 1,709 | 6,708 |
| 2024 | 3,179 | 775 | 3,954 |
| 2025 | 2,389 | 1,729 | 4,118 |
| 2026 (to 26 Aug) | 1,788 | 649 | 2,437 |
Photographs from the rides and runs behind the numbers.
All figures are moving time from my own GPS recordings. ◆ marks my quickest run at that event.
There is a decent overlap between the day job and the hobby: both are about estimating how much a system can take before it breaks, and both are easier when you have good data. The bike and the trail shoes just give more immediate feedback than a load case does.