I think the nav is a big challenge, and that’s why it’s helpful to be with someone who has run it before. There may be areas of the UK that provide both, but nothing close to me – and I need my training to fit in around my family – so most of my training took place on my doorstep. You need a big expanse of forest to recreate the challenges you face in terms of navigation, but you also need the hills.
But it’s difficult to train for the forest. So every time I went out at 5am, I was going up and down the same hill 20 times in wind and rain. It felt like every weekend there was a storm. This winter, I was also helped by the fact that the weather was pretty bad. It’s got a lot of climb and descent, so I ran a lot of hills. What kind of training did you do for the Barkley? I needed to wait for that moment as it’s not the kind of race you can do without being fully committed. At some point last summer, I suddenly wanted to do it. In 2019, after I won the Spine Race, people started asking me if I was going to run, but it took about two years for that idea to sink in. I also wasn’t inspired by the idea of running in loops around the same course – although, in reality, it never felt like I was on the same loop. But I wasn’t particularly attracted to it as it sounded a bit crazy and a suffer-fest.
When did the Barkley Marathons first capture your imagination?
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