Lloyd Biddell

For the last few years I have had an annual holiday in Suffolk and had been aware of a 10k not too far away from where I was staying.  This year I decided to enter, partly to get a greater understanding of my current fitness levels as my performance at the recent Burton 10k ended up not really telling me much. I knew the race had its undulations and that it was a two lap course, but other than that it was brand new to me.  The start was in the market square and at the off I temporarily hit the lead up the fairly sharp ascent out of town, but soon settled into third.  About 500 metres later I moved into second and just behind the shoulder of the leader.  It stayed this way up to the 2km point at the top of the gradual climb where I was able to hold on but could offer no more.  At this point my co-leader injected additional pace on a short flat section and to follow this would have put me into the red zone.  The rest of the 3rd km was sharply downhill and the lead extended to perhaps 10

Its been almost a year since my last race and as it happens it was at the same venue - the Burton 10k.  I defied expectations last year and had a strong race, winning in a time of 32.44 and strangely faster than in 2019 (32.56) and only a few seconds adrift of 2017 (32.38).  Over the last 12 months I have sensed that I have slipped a bit, I'm about 10 lbs heavier and a year older.  As each year now passes it becomes more and more difficult to hold onto what I had in the past, and recovery from exertions becomes that little more difficult. My fitness this year has deteriorated.  Since the Spine Race I struggled with a knee injury and my back issues continue to ebb and flow.  I only started to run again properly at the end of May and although I've had a decent block of training since, I've been reluctant to put any hard sessions in due to injury risk, instead concentrating on volume.  Obviously its these sessions that have the most gain, particularly when it comes to shorter

Since the Spine Race in January I've had a pretty torrid time with a knee injury developing at the beginning of March.  It came from nowhere but resulted in my knee being painful to the extent that all physical activity was off the cards for over a month.  Even with all of my injury troubles in the past I have always been able to do some form of activity e.g. cycling or cross training but this time the pain was too severe. Only around the beginning of April did my knee troubles begin to subside and I took a gamble in entering the PB270, but my expectations were low.  It was very much a 50/50 call and although the injury flared up a bit after I had entered it eventually settled down again. I lined up at the start mostly with the mind set about completing and discounting any expectations from the race.  From the off my legs felt dead but I was not unduly surprised due to the lack of activity over the preceding six weeks.  After a couple of km I took the lead and steadily built up a s

This is an update to a post I originally published in following the 2023 event.  I have now updated it to reflect the 2024 race. Over the years there have been a number of stats published about the Spine races, usually focusing on finish percentages etc.  I decided to take a look and see whether I could do something different with the data.  I've focused purely on the Winter Spine Race and none of the other races in the series. Some headline stats: 28 countries are represented in the finish results (increase of 2 as a result of 2024 event). There are 610 recorded finishes by 478 people Only 16 people have gone sub 100 hours (exc. 2015) - an increase of 4 during as a result of 2024 event. I've attached the spreadsheet I put together.  To explain it in a bit more detail take Jasmin Paris (row 6): She was the 230th recorded finisher The 185th individual to have ever finished the Spine The 5th fastest recorded time (includes people who have multiple finish times) The 5th fastest in

The story so far has concentrated on how the race unfolded, but there is another story to be told and unfortunately it is one that involves a negative experience of the race itself.  In the 20 years or so of having a running themed website I don't recall ever having written similar before, so it's not something that I have a propensity towards.  I am an avid reader of other peoples race experience and in the literal hundreds of blogs I think this is probably the first with a negative slant. Interviewed at the Finish, but not expressing how I really felt. Upon arrival at the monitoring station at Tan Hill at about 1.30am on the second (Monday) night I was told by the volunteer that they needed to pass on some news.  I was told that the Race Director had been made aware of my wife uploading videos on Youtube of my progress, that they needed to stop and any further uploading would be construed as receiving assistance and that I would be penalised accordingly. Now before we go furt

I would guess that upon leaving Bellingham total sleep was less than 3hrs 30mins in my first 100 hours of the race.  The plan today was to just get to the finish, but to take power naps as needed along the way.  The day turned out to be really pleasant, very crisp due to the cold but almost spring like when the sun was out.  I found the sweet spot for me was to power nap every 8-9km for 20 minutes.  I just found a suitable area, left my rucksack on my back and lay on the heather, setting my watch to wake me up after 20 minutes.  Bliss. The second time after about 15 minutes I naturally woke up to find Eoin coming past me.  I didn't feel as refreshed after this second nap so otherwise expected to need one more nap before arriving into Byrness.  As it happened me and Eoin struck up a conversation that lasted a good couple of hours.  I think it helped us both to keep the sleep issues at bay and it felt like we talked about anything and everything.  I recall a lot of discussion centred