JOGLE Day 6 – All roads lead to Lands End

*Day 1**Day 2**Day 3**Day 4**Day 5* Day 6 - Bude to Lands End 100 miles separating us from glory. Most people from this point would probably take the easy route. Straight down the A roads, avoiding the rugged coastline. Most people aren't morons like us. Apparently the direct route was only 90 miles, and it …

JOGLE Day 5 – The Queen Stage

*Day 1**Day 2**Day 3**Day 4* Day 5 - Hereford to Bude This was it then, the crux of the entire trip. Ever since we'd started the planning, this day was always looking huge.190 miles.Over 4,000m of climbing. Legs already absolutely trashed after 4 long, long days of riding. I honestly had severe reservations about the …

JOGLE Day 4 – Who’s idea was this again?

*Day 1**Day 2**Day 3* Day 4 - Preston to Hereford As devastating as it was, we eventually had to leave Preston behind us, robbed of a night on the town due to local lockdown restrictions. I still haven't worked out what we'd have worn for the occasion, but it definitely would've smelled really, really bad. …

JOGLE Day 3 – 200 miles or bust

*Day 1**Day 2* Day 3 - Edinburgh to Preston I think something that slightly blew my mind is that you can cycle 350 miles and still be nowhere near the Scottish border. It's a big place. A big, beautiful place. Shame about the Irn-Bru. Video - Day 3 breakfast Another restless sleep before another extremely …

JOGLE Day 2 – The ‘short’ day

*Day 1 - read here* Day 2 - Fort William to Edinburgh Readers worldwide will be hoping that a short day in the saddle means a short blog. I can't promise anything, but I'll try my best. JOGLE aficionados will note that going through Edinburgh is nowhere near the quickest or most direct route. Back …

Cape Peninsula Half Marathon – 16/02/20

Good morning/afternoon sports fans. Yet another slightly longer gap between posts. Not me being lazy this time, just no real races of note to report on, and nobody wants to hear 'I ran x miles on Monday followed by swimming x miles on Tuesday etc etc' - people only read to hear about me making …

2019 review – racing/training summary

2019 is already well and truly in the books, but I've been enjoying my Christmas pudding and mince pies far too much, so there's been a short delay in publishing the much anticipated 'how much training and racing does a semi-mediocre 'athlete' do in a year' post. For those of those of you bored at …

Valencia Marathon – 01/12/2019

As reported on these pages, as well as in various national and international press publications, 2019 hasn’t entirely gone to plan for Joe Spraggins. Seemingly never-ending waves of viral fatigue, bouts of depression and just a general attitude of can’t be arsed has led to a decline in fitness and results to match. However, the …

Frankfurt marathon – 27/10/19

Frankfurt. The financial centre of Europe, apparently. It was time to go and cash in some of those training chips. Unfortunately, I didn't have many, as alluded to in my post last week. However, this trip was all about the cleverer, prettier and less annoying person in our household - and she'd been working hard …

2018 training/racing summary

Right then- another year in the books. I've done one of these 'little' reviews every year, so I can't break the streak now (sounding like the crazy endurance addict that I am). 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 posts can be revisited. They all offer a thrilling read. You'd be a fool to miss out. The …