Dan Summers Running

  “Big l ungs and strong legs”, “80% is in the head”, “be bothered”.  These were a few of the tips for what makes a good high altitude mountaineer from Jon Gupta, Montane Athlete ( https://www.montane.com/jon-gupta-i17 ), one of the UK’s leading mountaineers and also the owner of a successful guiding business ( https://mountain-expeditions.co.uk/ ).  Jo n took advantage of lockdown and ran two online talks on high altitude mountaineering – an introductory one for 5-6,000m peaks and an advanced one for 7-8,000m peaks.   I joined the introductory talk.   This was partly because I like to dream of being a mountaineer one day, partly just for fun and partly because I was interested in the approach Jon was going to discuss and the points I could take into my own running, teaching and leading.   The three sound bites above were just the start of the crossover in approach and skills between ultrarunners and high altitude mountaineers.   When you think about it, this makes perfect sense.   A

“I ran a marathon and I felt like I couldn’t run another step.” “Why?” “What you’re going to RUN 100 miles?!” “Where do you sleep?” These are a selection of the bemused comments that I usually get from people when I try to explain my passion for running ultras.   Ultrarunning has become more and more popular over recent years.  If you haven’t ever tried one it would be very fair to wonder why that’s the case!  Stories from these sort of races usually start with comments like “I felt awful…”, “I’d been running for 6 hours in the dark….”, “My big toe nail fell off at mile 43…” – where is the fun in that?   If you have tried one then you’ll know about the amazing sense of adventure, the friendships, camaraderie, sense of achievement in just finishing races (rather than achieving a certain time) and that 3 day period after you finish when you just can’t eat enough food!   For me, ultrarunning is an adventure. Yes, it’s a challenge and hard physically but it’s often harder m

You may have heard phrases such as “FKTs” or “Fastest Known Times” during lockdown (or before) as people look for alternatives to the cancelled races.  Attempting Fastest Known Times on routes was growing in popularity even before lockdown started – now they are booming.   An FKT is simply the fastest known completion of a particular route.  Think of it as a Strava segment on some of the classic routes in the world!  In the UK they vary from routes such as the whole South West Coast Path – 630 miles (current record held by Damian Hall in 10d 15h 18m) and the Pennine Way – 268 miles (record of 2d 17h 20m 15s held by Mike Hartley has stood since 1989) to the Gordano Round (27 miles in Portishead and Clevedon – no current record) and the Limestone Link (40 miles from Shipham to north of Bath – more on this below!).  They also have different “styles” – Unsupported, Self-supported and Supported.  The differences are sometimes nuanced and not always logical but try to define how much ou