Mews - GO!

I love to race. From the nervous excitement I experience on the start line, followed by a rush of adrenaline as I step outside the boundaries of my self-imposed limitations, right through to those juicy endorphins as I reach the finish. I love the whole experience. And having completed more than 200 races of almost every distance and discipline across five continents, all described in my first book, 50 Races to Run Before You Die, its fair to say Im addicted.

In the closing chapter of 50 Races, I describe a fell race: over the course of five days and virtually self-supported, I ran 200 miles across the mountainous spine of Wales, with nothing but a map and compass to guide me. I so enjoyed that feeling of autonomy, working out what route to take, the mixture of adrenaline and fear I experienced as I crawled along the treacherous Crib Goch, and then the feeling of arriving at the finish, set in the ruins of an ancient castle and I wondered how I could top this. I had waited three years for the race, and if I wanted to repeat the experience, I would have to wait again.

Then it struck me: I didnt have to wait. I didnt need to worry about not getting a slot in a race before it sells out. I didnt even need to enter another race to get that outdoor fix. I could simply organise my own challenge, as I had been doing on and off for over a decade. If a race is similar to going for a special meal in a restaurant, then what I needed to do for the other days of the week was to learn how to cook for myself. Ultimately, the preparation and planning of an adventure is half the fun.

And so began a personal quest to create a series of Race It Yourself challenges. Using the knowledge and skills I picked up from my time in the army, I began to analyse my environment, looking for lakes to swim in, mountains to run up, trains to race against or castles to cycle between. Rather than look for the easiest route, Id look for the most difficult. Essentially, I was turning the ordinary into something extraordinary.

After moving my family from London to the French Pyrenees, I found myself not only entering the odd race, but also racing funiculars with my wife, creating SwimRun routes in the mountains, collecting cols to enter archaic French cycling clubs, bagging peaks, and even creating time trial routes between twinned towns. And in all of these endeavours, there were no entry fees to find. I just needed to grab a map and get outside.

The best way to think of this book is as a series of recipes for adventure or templates for athletic challenges where, just like in a race, the emphasis is on performance. Theyre not meant to replace organised races, but rather to complement them, allowing you in an act of spontaneity to get outside and challenge yourself.

Some of the ideas, like Everesting, are based on existing challenges. Others, like Extreme Twinning, Ive created from scratch. But the one thing that binds them all is the fact that you can do these challenges anywhere in the world. And in most cases, at any time. And for that reason, the book has been divided up into three sections: Midweek Madness, Wacky Weekends and Long-Term Burners.