Introducing Ultra Normal

Hello and welcome to Ultra Normal.

Out on the hills I often have thoughts and reflections on the experience. This is where I am going to try and capture some of them.

The stories of people who run ultras can be a little polarised. Often there is a significant back story where there is some inspiring tale of adversity that has been overcome and I’ve read, and enjoyed, many books and blogs on those lines. Or, those who write about it are the elite, running astonishing FKTs in incredible times, breaking the barriers of what we regard as possible, or even vaguely reasonable. Those are also great stories.

This is not one what you’ll find here though, doubtless, those amazing people will crop up.

I’m just normal.

Running ultras can be a quite normal thing and doesn’t necessarily involve some over-arching narrative. Sometimes it just naturally grows out of the other things in your life and doesn’t come to define your existence. That’s me.

I wanted somewhere to reflect on my experiences and, also, to comment on some issues in and around access to the countryside and right to roam.

The micro-adventure of ultra running

When I sparked up this site in April 2023 I had only run two ultras. I did the Lakeland Five Passes Ultra (50km) in June 2022 and Lakes in a Day (50miles) in October 2023. I have been stotting around the hills and fells for most of my adult life though and so I didn’t just stumble onto the great outdoors in the past year.

I do have plenty of experience of spending days on the hills but very little of ultras. My knees are, thankfully, holding out so I am hoping to add a few more ultras to the list but a lot of my interest is about the experience. I see an ultra as a subset of micro-adventure and that is highly personal. It’s not just about the event and the training and other runs outside of defined events should all be adventures too. That doesn’t mean they are all easy and joyous but it’s definitely not about enduring the drudgery of long training days to experience some ephemeral transient elation of crossing a finishing line and putting on a medal. It’s the whole package that matters.

Cape Wrath Ultra

It was in that spirit of adventure that I signed up for the Cape Wrath Ultra and it has been the preparation that drove me to start the site. I actually signed up for it in May 2023 before having done any ultras at all. We will see how it plays out.

Social media

I’m really not on social media much, if at all, at the moment. I do have a very basic husk of an account on Facebook and it is possible you’ve found this site from there. I’m not on Twitter but I do have a Mastodon account. Of course, it used to be the case, perhaps still is, that blogs and websites are regarded as social media, and certainly if people comment and interact on many websites then I regard this as a good thing.

It would be a nonsense to suggest I am against social media but, in current practice, the evidence suggests to me that there are a tremendous number of insidious and categorically overt downsides of having social media owned and controlled by private profit-making corporations. Which all sounds a bit self-indulgently wankerish when I write it but I generally feel the need to explain my position. So, please, do feel free to leave comments and get in touch here.

Right to roam

My interest in this has grown in recent years and I’m certainly hoping to do some commenting on this topic. If you want to get cracking then I can recommend two books and a website for starters. The books are Guy Shrubsole’s Who Owns England and The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes.¹ Make sure you visit the Right to Roam website as well.

I noticed one review of Who Owns England on Amazon complained it was too political. That is kind of the point.

Evidence-based…

Wherever possible I do like to get back to some good quality evidence and I’ll certainly try to point people towards original sources when I can. If I don’t and you wonder about the veracity of any points, then get in touch.