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Hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life! You know it's steep when they start marking the distances in 250m sections, distance becomes irrelevant when it's that steep. I've never run a race where I have 2km to go and I'm not sure I'm going to finish, the last 5km is absolutely brutal.

From 35km onwards the side of the trail starts to look like a battle zone, mostly people just cramping up but quite a few just sitting there because they've just ground to a halt.

There must have been a big group of elite runners who went off like nutters and utterly destroyed each other because I counted at least 15 who were either sat on the roadside or walking, they all had red numbers 1-200 so it always gave you a little boost when you passed one of them :)

4 of us did it and 4 of us finished which was the main thing, I had 4:20 in my head when I thought I'd be fit for it so I was pretty pleased with 4:36.

I think a mile longer and my wife would have caught me, 4 minutes was far too close for comfort :D

Some proper hills out here :D went up to the top of Europe today, amazing to see the north face of the Eiger after reading so many stories associated with it :)

Went up to the finish line as well to have a look at the climb up, really excited now can't wait until Saturday :)

Off to Switzerland tomorrow for the Jungfrau Marathon on Saturday. I should be nervous but although I'm undertrained for it, it's actually the first big race I've gone into this year without an injury.

My plan is destroy myself to 16 miles ( mostly flat ) and then just try and stay ahead of my wife whose been doing 80+ mile weeks with 7000+ feet of climbing.

Off to watch Heidi on YouTube while eating Toblerones.

No idea what wasps they are but the nest is now touching the wall and the box behind, hopefully they'll all vanish come winter and I'll be a little more clued up about looking for new nests come spring.

A couple of months back I knelt on a tarpaulin covering some floor tiles out the back of my workshop, I felt something go squish and then was engulfed by angry wasps. Not very angry though as they didn't sting me.

A couple of hours later they'd managed to fix most of the cracks.

I've been assured they'll leave come winter but at the moment they seem very happy there and it seems to be increasing in size every week :D

Lovely final longish run today before Jungfrau Marathon, just what I needed as a confidence booster.

10 miles at 7.00 m/mile pace, with the last two at 6.50 just for fun. Haven't felt that good on a run since i got injured before London Marathon.

If I can get through Jungfrau in good shape I might just be coming into some fitness for Snowdon :)

You should be :D seriously good luck, looks a real toughie :)

I get the feeling I could do with putting on some weight, I'm running o.k but actually felt better when I was a few pounds heavier. Currently 57 kg, lighter than when I left school 28 years ago :D

Hill saved me to be honest :D I need a good hill to break a race up I'm terrible in flat races, Snowdon is my marathon pb. The bridge did surprise me both ways but it feels like a long old drag to the finish.

Severn Bridge 1/2 done, great race and I felt pretty good but still haven't got the all out speed in the legs yet. Finished in 1:29:13 pretty happy as I finished strong and no injuries which was the main thing.

Lovely 8 miles done this morning, 18 mile trail run tomorrow then Severn Bridge Half Marathon on Sunday. Then it's into taper for Jungfrau Marathon :)

It's a 1997/8 frame, Banesto and Telekom were racing same frame in the tour that year, love mine :)

20.5 miles this morning with just over 2000 feet of climbing, pissed down for the whole run. As soon as I stopped the sun came out and it's now lovely out there :D

Similar thing happened to me at one of our club speed sessions, new boy joined who was built more like a rugby player. I kept up with him on the first interval but then got completely blown away by him, I was a little upset until I stalked him on Runbritain and saw he has a 14:40 5k and 32:01 10k to his name :D

Had a really crap month of running and I was starting to think my first ultra marathon had destroyed my running forever, terrible ankle pain on all my runs and just couldn't run faster than 7:40 m/miles if my life depended on it.

Saturday morning running downhill I managed to trip on somebody's driveway, fly through the air and smash my whole left side especially my elbow into that lovely ribbed concrete surface.

I had a little cry and a sit down, then got up and I ended up having a lovely 20 mile run. Sunday morning ran our club championship half marathon, not great but compared to what I have been doing for the last month I was chuffed to bits with 1:31:16.

I've got four weeks now to get some time on feet before Jungfrau Marathon, in reality I'm just looking to enjoy it and be in some sort of form for Snowdon Marathon in October.

I hate being injured, had to drive my wife to Tenby for a 10k this morning. Over an hours drive to stand in the wind and rain for 40 minutes, trying to look cheery watching everyone running one of my favourite races in my favourite conditions.

She got £20 for 2nd V45, so i'll have to put up with her crowing about it for days on end now as well. :D

Went to get some bits from behind the workshop, knelt down and found myself engulfed in angry wasps. Oops! They've spent the last couple of hours fixing the results of my unprovoked assault.

Not sure if I can bring myself to nuke it from the sky so might just leave them to it, plus it's another excuse as to why I still haven't tiled the floor :D

Good luck on the Spine Race, looks brutal! Well done on finishing RTTS when you blow that badly it's a huge effort to drag yourself around, I'm looking on the bright side and thinking it can only make me stronger.

Jungfrau Marathon is our next big one, marathon miles are going seem so so easy after 30 mile slow slow training runs. I've got a few 1/2 marathons coming up so it will be nice to get some speed back in the legs.

It was 'Race to the stones' lots of friendly cyclists on the course despite us cluttering up the lovely trails :)

Well that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, maybe a 40 mile Ultra as a first would have been the more sensible option.

I went into it not having run for almost a fortnight with really bad achilles pain, from the start I didn't feel great but by 20 miles my achilles pain had miraculously vanished and didn't bother me for the rest of the race.

I was out on my feet by the halfway checkpoint and if there had been an easy pull out option I would have taken it, after a bit of food and a coffee I had a half decent 10 mile section to 40 miles but that's where the wheels really fell off.

I sat down for a little while and could barely stand or walk afterwards, 40 to 50 miles was dreadful. I couldn't eat or drink as my guts were in bits and it coincided with the worst part of the course along an 'A' road, so it just went on and on and on.

Then something weird happened, I sat down at the last pit stop with 11.2 km to go had some lovely lemon tart and a coffee and stood up a new man.

Stormed the last 10k which was dark by now, up on my toes for the first time in the race following the glow sticks into Avebury for a well deserved pint.

I wanted sub 12 hours but knew that wasn't on from very early on, in the end I finished 100km in 14 hours 21 minutes. I was disappointed at first but on reflection I'm pretty happy considering the build up and state I was in at points.

Only disappointing aspect was that my wife refused to leave me to die in a ditch so sacrificed her race to drag me along to the finish, I think on her own she would have smashed 12 hours.

This Ultra is going to be 62 miles of fun fun fun. Achilles have really flared up in the last week, Thursday I was down to a slow limp so not good.

Been icing like mad and they have improved in the last couple of days, so I've got my fingers crossed but as it's on Saturday I don't think it's going to be much fun and might end up being a very long walk.

Anyone got any experience of Kino tape ? It's something I've never thought could work but I was given some yesterday and they taped up my achilles. It might just be the placebo effect of having something hugging your achilles, or just good timing as they were getting better anyway, or just my desperation for something to work :D but! And I hate to admit it, it does seem to be doing something :)

Unfortunately not, very plain grey with green and pink bits.

This running lark just got a whole heap more expensive, I won a pair of Adidas Adizero Boost 2.0 shoes a few weeks ago. I was hoping they would be pants as I really don't want to be paying that much for a running shoe.

First run in them this morning on tired, tired legs and I already know I've found my new running shoe of choice :) went out to run 6 miles to test them out and ran 15 as I was having so much fun :)

Longest run done and dusted 31 miles with 3,554 feet of climbing a lot of which was sand dunes. Felt pretty good at the end but must admit the thought of doing it all over again was pretty daunting.

Just over two weeks to the race so a couple of nice easy weeks now :)

28.5 miles around Gower this morning with 3500 ft of climbing. Best run so far, felt good all the way around but got a second wind at 20 miles and felt great all the way home.

12 miles planned for tomorrow, Caerphilly 10k on Sunday then sleep :D

Swansea Half Marathon today, ran it as a training run as all I've been doing is slow, slow runs and also didn't want to re-injure myself before the ultra in 3 weeks.

Chatted to people and generally had a great time so I was really surprised to come home in 1:28:48, guess these long runs are doing something after all :)