A Fort William GP won the Ben Nevis Race, Scotland’s blue riband hill running event, for the tenth year in succession.

Finlay Wild, 35, has won the MacFarlane Cup and the accompanying Gold Medal awarded to the first place finisher at the annual race to the summit of the UK’s highest mountain every year since 2010.

This year, he led from gun to tape, finishing almost eight minutes ahead of his nearest rival, Lochaber AC clubmate John Yells, maintaining a winning streak unprecedented in such a major British hill or fell running race.

The Ben Nevis Race

Running from the front has become a hallmark of Wild’s assaults on the Ben – and so it was this year. In warm, sunny conditions, he led 500 runners up the tourist track and was first to the summit.

On the descent, Wild had to negotiate ascending runners, as well as tourists enticed by the weather, and suffered a small fall. ‘It didn’t cause any problems, but probably made me subconsciously take it just slightly more steadily,’ he said. ‘On the descent l knew I had a big lead but wasn’t on for a personal best, so I just focused on getting the win rather than taking risks.’

Photo: Provided by Athlete

A family affair with deeper meaning

He continues: ‘Ten in a row feels weird. I never dreamt of winning even once when I pitched up to run my first Ben in 2006 aged 21. I was 13th. I lost my 20-year-old brother Alex to suicide that year and was dealing with a lot of raw emotion and sadness. I remember thinking a lot about him during the run – a misty, adventurous challenge – what he would have thought or said about it. Ten has crept up on me. I’ve been lucky not to be too injured or ill any of the years.

Photo: Pete Bland Sports (who have a cracking website if you need any fell/trail running gear)

“Ten is just a number”

The post The Power of 10 for Finlay Wild appeared first on Fast Running.

The frequency of runners making their way to fields, barns and boots of cars to register their name and pin a number to their vest is once more on the rise. Across the country, they group together on start lines and look up to see the ground rise above them, the path their studs will tread disappearing from view.

As a collective, they are called hill runners (or fell runners, if you’re reading this in England).

Runners of every age, and every level, have a spot in these gatherings. Brushing shoulders are the people who will finish at the front and at the back, and they are as likely to share a post-race coffee and cake or something stronger as with anyone else in the field.

Everyone, bar maybe a couple of unfortunate injuries during, will make it around the pre-set checkpoints, and then recount their unique tale of the race, highs and lows, afterwards. And that is the purely lovely thing about this sport – fastest known times are kept track of and record chasing times congratulated, but the real stories are between the individuals and the hills.

It is a feeling shared amongst all who take part. It is a mindset engrained in the sport.

Speaking of mindsets, there are some who query the logicalness of these hill people who congregate to run around wilder landscapes. So for those who wonder, here is (a very small) idea of what a hill runner’s mind is like.

A hill runner never stops thinking about hills

The more time I started to spend in the hills, getting to know the fell running community and acquainting myself with the sports history, the more my outlook of the outdoor landscape changed.

No longer did I just take in the views as they were, appreciating only their natural beauty; I also began to see what they could offer to satisfy my craving for more. This craving is shared extensively among those who have been absorbed into the sport. The hills have a hold, and they continually tug at our thoughts, our minds unable to resist wandering among their majesty while on the work commute or eating dinner.

Hill runners relish seeking out new challenges for themselves, whether that be mapping out a new route through familiar hills, bagging a set of Munros, or taking down all 214 Lakeland Wainwrights in one sitting. Granted the latter is a more ‘hardcore’ example, but whatever the level of the challenge, it is relative to the person who’s conjured it up.

It’s about self-progression and fulfilment. Each and every one of these is to be admired, and I never fail to be inspired on an almost daily basis from hearing of remarkable feats from the many individuals that make this sport what it is. The act of running in hills is unconfined, the sport is what the person makes of it – there are no limits for you here.

A hill runner is impervious to adversity

Mad – the word that most commonly follows in a runners wake as they pull themselves up steep ascents and dive with seemingly complete lack of control off summits.

Hill runners possess a slightly different type of common sense. They have a tenacity and almost ignorant mindset towards extreme conditions and levels of physical pain. I don’t think I’ve met a people that are as resolute in pushing on into the wild, unknown depths of unpleasant places, in landscape and head. Give them a ferocious winter storm, give them baking hot summer days, they will drive on with unfaltering assuredness to see it through, or until they sink on broken legs to the ground.

I was about 11 or 12 years old when I first took part in a hill race. Following in my older sister’s footsteps, I stepped onto the start line of Scald Law junior hill race in the Pentland Hills just outside Edinburgh, having just pulled on every layer of clothing I possessed. These were reluctant beginnings for an obsession with elevated lands – a bitterly cold day, snow up to my waist at its deepest, I almost cried my way to the turn-around marker.

I can’t lie, this experience put me off for a few years after. Returning to the sport however, I found a new understanding and acceptance of hills and their frequently testing moods. A desire to spend more time in these places regardless of the elements started to grow, and I believe it came from the seed that was planted in that first wild experience (it just took some time to flourish).

A hill runner has a single-minded approach when it comes to their pastime, almost considering nothing other than their next footsteps. Anything that the natural world throws at them they can almost disconnect from. They enjoy the individual moments, the present, and no matter how bad the conditions, this focusses their mind on completing what’s ahead of them.

There is an engrained spirit in all hill runners and no matter when things go wrong, the situation is never too bad because of it. A recent junior fell championship race characterised this. I was acting as ‘sweeper’ marshal for the day, and during one race a young runner was struggling at the halfway point. They could easily have given up and sat down at the side of the path, but instead they continued putting one foot in front of the other.

The perseverance was clear to see, and although their face told a different story, I imagined there to be a small but discernible burning light of strength and heart deep inside them, keeping their belief alive. This not only kept them going, but on making it to the final stages, lifted them to greater speed. From a place of pain to a place of exhilaration, it was inspiring to see the energy and motivation they had.

A hill runner enjoys the experience

For many, hill training is repelling. For hill runners, it is empowering. A common trait of training is the repetition of a set distance or time, until such a quantity is reached to make a perceived benefit. On flat ground, the sanity of this routine is only occasionally questioned, yet the slight variation used in a hill runner’s training diet gives way to a much higher frequency of disbelieving looks.

The concept of running hard up and down a hill repetitively, undoing all the energy used to gain the height, could be seen as counter-productive. To a hill runner however, they can finish this relentless punishment and stand back to say “I just conquered that hill and felt good for it”.

The slightly nauseating feeling akin to a stormy sea as the built-up lactate tips around upon turning to descend or ascend once more is part of that conquering. There’s a perverse sense of enjoyment in the discomfort. A “glutton for punishment”, an onlooker described my friend as they ran on higher.

Those days of a beautifully painful repetition then give way to the ever-growing freedom found during long escapades across hilly lands. Rising and falling, the hills provide a multitude of soul-satisfying moments, all connecting to create this great story that will always have a place on the bookshelf of memories. I don’t believe you can get that anywhere else.

RELATED: How to regain your running mojo

Jacob Adkin features in the ‘Fast 10: class of 2019’ and over the course of the year will share his running journey. You can follow Jacob on Twitter and Instagram, while further information about the ‘class of 2019’ can be found here.

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The post Inside the hill runner’s mind appeared first on Fast Running.

The 2:15 marathoner recently finished third at the Commonwealth Games, yet the Scottish athlete is more widely known in the mountain running world, winning races across Europe and medalling at the World Mountain Running Championships too.

So naturally, when we spoke to Simpson about his favourite training session it would have been a disservice to list just one. The versatile Scottish hill runner takes Fast Running through his favourite hill session and his favourite marathon workout as well

As in Simpson’s career, the hills come first

“It has to be continuous uphill fartlek,” states Simpson when asked about his favourite hill run. “I started doing these sessions after my second summer season in the Alps.

“I was struggling with the sustained uphills of an hour or more and found these much more race specific rather than sprinting up a hill then jogging all the way down. My coach at the time (Martin Cox) suggested trying these and they helped a lot.”

A lot of the mountain races that Simpson has excelled at in recent years have sustained uphills of 1000 or more metres of climbing. With training advice coming from seasoned mountain athlete and coach Martin Cox the workouts were perfect for these events. 

“First find a long climb ideally 40-50 minutes long averaging about 10% with some flatter and steeper sections mixed in,” he says. “Normally I’d do a session like 6 x 5 minutes (3 easy) or 8 x 3 minutes (2 easy) but the recovery is also ran uphill, just at an easier effort.”

Controlling the effort in these sessions can be key, for both the hard sections and the recoveries. Too hard in either and it can affect the session as a whole.

The GB mountain runner agrees and says: “It’s hard to recover fully if you push too hard in the rep so it’s important to ease in the session rather than attacking the first rep or two.”

Enjoy the view

There is of course also the great views to be enjoyed on hill workouts.

“The best thing is you get to finish at the top of a big hill and appreciate the views rather than traditional hill reps with downhill recovery,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll do the session up a mountain with a cable car then take that back down afterwards and save the legs. After such a tough aerobic session, the lift means they can feel great the day after.”

Now a cable car may be a luxury for Alpine mountains but there is always the Snowdon Train for those based in North Wales. If you’re reading this in somewhere like Norfolk or Cambridgeshire then there are plenty of UK hills that would fit a session like this. 

Areas such as the Lake District, Brecon Beacons, Snowdonia and huge areas of Scotland can be visited in a weekend and it can be great to combine a faster, higher quality session like this with a easier longer day in the hills the following. 

The Deeside runner continues to show his versatility. On the 13th May victory in the Ben Lomond fell race, followed by running 30:29 for first place at the BHGE 10k in Aberdeen (20 May) and then just a week later winning the Gamperney Berglauf in 45:57 in Switzerland. That’s 8.8km with 1000m of climbing and three victories in three weeks. Chapeau.

Check back next week when Simpson has promised to share his favourite marathon session.

The post My favourite session: Robbie Simpson appeared first on Fast Running.

In this section of his new book “The Mountains are Calling” Muir talks with some of Britain’s best mountain runners about their training and what makes the mountains so special… or not.

Joe Symonds and Tom Owens are facing an audience at Kinlochleven Primary School on the eve of the Glen Coe Skyline. Joe had won the 2015 race; Tom would finish second in the 2016 version the following day.

The question and answer session is arranged by Salomon, the race sponsor, and has a disjointed, awkward air. Joe runs 60 to 70 miles per week, he tells us, much of the volume accomplished by commuting from his family home to work as a doctor. Hill repeats, a threshold session and a long run in the hills are standard features of his week.

When Tom speaks, he virtually parrots Joe; there is little to distinguish their training. I sense the audience searching for something: a collective yearning to know the answer to that crucial question: why are you so good at running? And perhaps more pertinently, why are you better than us?

We ask about tapering and shoes – as if wearing the same studs as Joe and Tom will make an iota of difference. The questions continue: motivation, cross-training, race strategy. I cannot help but think of the elephant in the room: genetic inheritance. Perhaps they should use this platform to make a public apology? After all, they cannot be blamed for the accident of birth.

“You get out what you put in”

Tom dismisses the notion when, several months later and days before he is due to fly out to Costa Rica to race in the six-day, 142-mile Coastal Challenge, I ask him to elaborate on the comments he made in Kinlochleven. ‘One of the main things I like about running is that generally you get out what you put in,’ he says.

‘For me, that means a lot of hard work but also trying to be clever with training – focusing on key sessions, build-ups and of course proper recovery. I believe there are very gifted athletes, but without the commitment to hard work, they won’t stick it out or will break down. I certainly don’t think I have any particularly good running ability other than persistence, determination and a fairly positive mindset.’

In the world of Tom Owens, ‘persistence’ and ‘determination’ look like this: a solid base of winter mileage; two or three ‘quality’ sessions a week that could be hill work, a tempo run, flat intervals or a race, as well as twice-weekly visits to the mountains; a week or fortnight-long warm weather training camp in the peaks of the Canaries; a job as an ecologist that means many hours every day on his feet wearing heavy boots; miles of cycling because he does not own a car; a summer sabbatical in the Alps or Pyrenees running alongside some of the best athletes on the planet – in 2016, Tom ran the 100-mile route of the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc in three days, then climbed Mont Blanc; racing regularly and racing hard – he has twice been a Scottish hill racing champion and a runner-up in the Extreme Skyrunning Series; at the end of a season, usually in November and December, running is temporarily replaced by cyclo-cross. And then it starts all over again.

I was still unsatisfied. Despite his obvious aptitude for hard work, how could Tom not accept that he was born lucky – that his heart, lungs and legs were better equipped for running than the overwhelming majority? He would dominate the Coastal Challenge, winning overall and each of the day stages. ‘Would you accept you are blessed with natural ability?’ I wrote in a message to Tom when he was home again. ‘It is indisputable that not everyone can be a champion hill racer,’ I explained. ‘If two people undertake the same training and share similar discipline, talent will naturally separate them.’

Tom disagreed again, naming a handful of mountain and ultra-distance runners who he considered to be ‘naturally gifted’: Kilian Jornet, Jonathan Wyatt, Marco de Gasperi and Angela Mudge. Tom Owens, he insisted, was not on the list. ‘Even then,’ Tom said, ‘they still have the desire to compete and train very hard. I certainly don’t put myself in the same category as those guys. Without determination and training, and the ability to recover from training and racing, I would not have any success.’

“Nature or nurture?”

In the end, I got an answer that satisfied my probing from Stephen Pyke, a runner who would know: he has run all the Munros in 39 days. ‘Kilian – in terms of the physiology he has been blessed with – is that Usain Bolt freak of nature type athlete,’ he said.

‘Tom is probably blessed to be in the top five per cent of having a good physiology for running, and through hard work he has turned himself into a top athlete – but he has probably not been born with the physiology and talent that Kilian has. Ultimately, however hard he works, if Kilian works at the same level, Tom is not going to beat him.’

When utilised then, there is no substitute for raw genetically-conceived talent – but tenacity comes very close. Kate Jenkins won three hill racing championships in seven years, as well as several Scotland vests, through sheer force of will. She is proudly alternative. ‘I can’t sit still,’ she says. ‘I never trained to race. I feel restless and I go for a run. That’s the bottom line. It’s my anti-depressant, my anger management, my frustration release; it’s for when I’m feeling crap at work. And I love beautiful places. They make me feel at peace.’

Kate grew up on a Pentlands hill farm, walking the fields and moors barefoot. Burying sheep and cutting tracks kept her fit. She was ‘feral’, she admits, and it was little wonder she was ‘tomboyish’ at school. At university, fellow students would ask, ‘you’re not running again?’ Kate would nod – and go for her run.
‘They would think I was a freak or weird,’ she says.

In later years, coaches wondered why she lacked focus, despite her obvious ability and endurance. She twice attempted to follow training schedules. The first – a six-month programme – had no effect, she insists. As for the second: ‘I was injured after two weeks. I’d never been injured before, so I thought, stuff this training bollocks.’

“16 bags of crisps and a West Highland Way”

Stuff convention too. When Kate won the first of her seven West Highland Way Race titles in 1999, finishing third overall, she was averaging a mere 30 miles a week in preparation. Her nutrition for the 95-mile route included 16 bags of crisps – effectively one packet every six miles. ‘I eat what I want,’ she declares. ‘And I drink – lots.’

Perhaps it was Kate’s carefree attitude that made her excel – an attitude characterised by eight extraordinary days in 2011. After winning her seventh West Highland Way, she raced in the Pentlands four days later, ahead of two long back-to-back weekend races, Arrochar Alps and the Lairig Ghru, taking her racing miles in that period to almost 150.

A fortnight later, Kate was second Briton in the women’s race in the Trail World Championships in Connemara, Ireland, but paid the price for her formidable effort: ‘I ended up in the back of an ambulance.’

Kate’s mantra for success is as simple as they come: ‘I am bloody-minded.’ When we speak several months later, she tells me she has ‘trashed her heel’. She was heading out to ‘beast hill reps’ nonetheless. Her rationale? ‘I can’t bear weight on it, so up on the toes work instead.’

The post The mountains are calling: what makes a hill runner special? appeared first on Fast Running.