I cannot recommend what I am about to describe. Competitive free soloing i.e., against the clock, or trying to better another time, is only going to end up with someone dying.

For a long time, I had wanted to complete a solo and unsupported Bob Graham Round in winter, but for one reason or another it hadn’t happened. Mostly, that was due to me being fussy about what constitutes genuine winter conditions.

Plain and simple, the Clyde Muirshiel hills are horrible…. The landscape is bleak and barren. A sea of heathery tussock moorland that make any kind of coordinated movement virtually impossible. Step, step, stumble, step, stumble, stumble, step…

“Perfect. Perfect for us”. I quip on the start line when asked my opinion of the horrendous weather barrelling down Mickleden, by the OMM media team. Minutes later as Duncan I climb out of the relative shelter of the valley, I start to wonder if we’ll be eating my words…

The LAMM is characterised by its adventurous atmosphere and wild landscapes, often held in remote Scottish Highland terrain, the courses have fewer checkpoints than other mountain marathons (occasionally resulting in win/lose route choice options), and of course it is famed for its remote overnight camp.

Visibility is down to 20 metres in the worst of the murk at the start of the day, and now as we traverse between checkpoints two and three we are catching the earlier starting teams on the elite course. It’s day one of the OMM, and my partner Duncan Archer shouts a rare warning that he’s lost contact with the map. I glance down at the map in my hand, thumb firmly held on our location, and hear a voice in my head, ‘Use the Force Luke’ before confirming to Duncan, “Don’t worry, I am on it”.

Trofeo Kima is one of the most famous alpine races and part of the Extreme Skyrunning World Series. It’s a race I had wanted to do for years, and for once I arrived at the race with a few months of consistent running behind me. I was looking forward to the Kima experience. But I ended up in the hospital instead…

May 2016. My running mojo is broken, and I am struggling to find the motivation to prioritise my personal running, over organising running events for others. How do I balance my ambition to run a successful business, deliver excellence in my events, and have the self-discipline to walk away from a never-ending task list each day? How do I break this cycle?

I also have a new understanding of the Mountain Training Award schemes, and a greater respect for them. They are practitioner’s awards and there is no getting away from the fact that those QMD’s are hard to earn, but build a solid foundation for everything that follows. I would not hesitate to recommend becoming a Mountain Leader.

You certainly get what you put into an event. Despite my lack of motivation pre-event, I was determined to race as hard as I could once I started, and couldn’t help but enjoy myself more and more as the race unfolded. My very genuine and grassroots love of mountain marathon racing sucked me in, despite of myself, and I have come away from the weekend sore but satisfied.

Without a doubt the roughest, toughest, most serious race I have ever done. I am confident that many runners would consider the majority of the course to be completely unrunnable and the seriousness of the terrain completely unjustifiable…

There is a superb atmosphere at the start and a bit of a crush in the last moments before the gun, which I decide not to fight. I let the other runners jostle for position... and BANG! Suddenly we were off. I am somewhere, 100's of places behind the leaders as the runners surged through the streets of Zegama. Slowly, I move up through the field on the initial climb, but want to stay conservative with my effort. It would be too easy to go off too fast.

Squalls of wintery weather had been blasting through all day and there were a few inches of fresh snow on the higher ground. It was winter in the Scottish Highlands; this was the Highlander Mountain Marathon.

I am writing this account of our journey in the hope that it will also be useful for other hikers considering the Cape Wrath Trail. However, note that there is no official Cape Wrath Trail! Rather, there is a whole matrix of route choice options described in the Cicerone guidebook and shown on the excellent Harveys Maps. For example, we had always intended to avoid the more sedate Great Glen start and head out west to the wilds of Knoydart (we thought this route would be more adventurous and remote... and it was).

In 2008 I had completed a winter Charlie Ramsay Round in a new record time of 29:59:34. Ever since I’d wanted to have another attempt and felt that if conditions were right a sub 24 hour round in winter was a real possibility. During 2009 and 2010 I was unwell with Chronic Fatigue and unable to contemplate another go. By 2011 I was well again but didn’t feel ready or want to risk a relapse. Finally, by the winter of 2012 I was fitter than ever and brimming with confidence after my OMM Elite win with Duncan Archer at the end of 2011.

Last year, Duncan Archer and I had raced together at the Dartmoor OMM finishing fifth. It was a great result for us but even then we felt we could improve. Building on that experience, during 2011 Duncan had won the LAMM and come second at the BAMM, while I had come second in the SLMM Klets and finally put the Chronic Fatigue that had wiped out 2009 and most of 2010 behind me. This year we headed to the OMM as a more experienced and fitter team and whilst we recognised that we were an outside bet for the win, we did realise that we had a chance and both of us were psyched to give it everything.

Each summer the outdoor industry gathers in Friedrichshafen, Germany for the OutDoor Trade Show. A feature of the show is the Gore-Tex sponsored 'Europe's Fastest Trail Runner' competition. This quite crazy competition is part running, part parcour, part assault course and takes place on a BMX terrain park used for the Euro Bike show a few weeks later. Without seeing the course it's difficult to describe just how big and bad the obstacles are…

With about 1300 competitors racing in pairs, the Saunders is one of the larger mountain marathons. Unusually for a mainstream mountain marathon the organisers allow the elite runners to go solo in a separate category called the Klets and this was the fate that awaited me.

The Ramsay Round was first completed in less than 24 hours by Charlie Ramsay in July 1978. He started and finished at Glen Nevis Youth Hostel, at the foot of Ben Nevis, completing a non stop run across some of the toughest mountain terrain in Britain. Charlie Ramsay’s route is now known as the ‘Ramsay Round’ and the challenge is to complete it in less than 24 hours.

John Arran and I like adventures… we especially like big, silly adventures! We had been climbing together regularly since 2000 and with our shared passion for soloing we often spent the evening in the Peak District cruising freely up and down routes. There were very few crags that we hadn’t blazed through at one time or another. Naturally, we pushed each other to climb more routes, harder routes and to do it all quicker.