2025 Northern Traverse
Its now been over a year since my last ultra race, the Cheviot Goat in December having been cancelled the night before the race. Prior to that I entered the Pennine Bridleway 270km last April but only made it about 20 miles into the race before illness forced my retirement. I therefore have to go back as far as January 2024 (Winter Spine) before reaching anything remotely comparable. I've long been fascinated with the Coast to Coast route and have in fact done it twice, once in 2008 and the other in 2020. The former was with a colleague from work where we fast packed in just under 5 days and the latter was with my wife as support where I made as much distance as I could in the day, before stopping somewhere overnight. I completed the latter in about 86 hours including the stops so it is the benchmark to beat. I was therefore broadly familiar with the route, albeit there have been changes since and also to the route specifically for this race. For those less...