It is the start of October 2025 and I’ve not put any update out on my YouTube recently. I am such a perfectionist when it comes to my own videos that it takes me forever to put together a 10 minute video, hours spent picking the right music, making titles etc. But I have been helping the kids write their own stories recently (thanks 500 words) and I enjoy it so much I have started to revisit my old blog.
2025 has been a strange year where I thought I had sorted out my Vestibular Migraines (or lightheaded dizziness) from last autumn and started training hard for the Brighton Marathon, South Downs Way 100 and Lakeland 100.
I ran Brighton Marathon in early April, after a good block of training where I finally started to get into the swing of combining strength training in the gym and running – something I’ve never managed before. I really recommend the structured plans from Holly & Pete Stables if you find yourself unsure of what to do in the gym to really injury proof your legs.
Brighton was fun but hot. At around 15 miles in I started to feel really nauseous and slowed. I took on some Maurten gels but just felt like I had nothing in my legs to give.
Never mind I thought, and looked onwards to revisiting the South Downs and hoping to better my 40 mile dnf from 2024. Unfortunately in the fortnight after Brighton (away in our new campervan and spending a lot of time barefoot) the heel pain I had probably tried to ignore for the previous month became more intense and I developed a bad case of Plantar Fasciitis. Deciding that I should take a decent amount of time off to let it heal I gave up my place in SDW100 and decided instead to focus on recovery and preparing for Lakeland 100, with my main goal to go for a pb time (sub 34 hours).
I let the PF get better (although it still niggles from time to time), and began the now yearly tradition of every June & July, getting up at 4am on the weekends and spending hours on the hills of the north downs, near where we live, hiking up, and running down as much as possible. This year I was trying Leki poles that Andy bought me for my birthday, in the hope that they might ease some of the fatigue in the latter stages of race day. Training was fun, and combined with the hours spent twice weekly in the gym, my legs felt stronger than ever.
The weekend before we drove up to the Lakes for the race we went up to London to take the kids to a Minecraft experience. On the way in the car, for the first time in what felt like forever I started to feel dizzy. Fuck. The last time I felt this bad I was unwell with a cold, the stress on my body seemed to bring on the dizziness and I had to spend a lot of time lying in a dark room. I blamed it on Andy’s London driving. That same afternoon when we got home one of the kids lifted up his t-shirt to reveal his first itchy spots of chicken pox. Fucking fuck, perfect timing. While administering Calpol and handfuls of Poxiclin I got an almighty tooth ache behind one of my back teeth – explaining the dizziness, and spent the night with a hot water bottle slapped on my cheek.
The next day it was worse, and clearly now an infection. Dizziness on 8/10 now I secured some antibiotics and started taking them to clear it up.
On Wednesday, we left to drive up north. Thankfully my son’s chickenpox was starting to improve, as had my tooth infection. Aware that I probably needed to put some good bacteria back into my system to prepare it for an onslaught of ultra marathon race nutrition, I bought the most expensive packet of probiotics Holland & Barrett in Kendal sell and started taking them. Making Coniston for 9am registration on race day morning my body still felt fatigued (maybe from the infection, maybe from the travel – who knows) but nothing a nap couldn’t sort – I hoped.
After a nap and pre race kit packing we were ready and in the start pen listening to Nessun Dorma. Off we ran up out of Coniston and up onto the fells and I felt fine. Andy (also running) and I had started towards the back not realising that the start pen would be so crowded but this forced us to start more sensibly than normal. Andy disappeared running down into the first check point and I figured I might see him later on. Unfortunately for him it was only a few more miles before I caught him running into check point 2. Having serious pain in his right hamstring he decided to stop in Boot where we had some friends watching from the pub. He caught a lift back and I continued and pushed on taking on plenty of cake and maurten gels as it got dark. Over Black Sail pass and Haystacks I was running pretty much alone. Keen to make no mistakes and keep moving I neglected to eat and got into Buttermere feeling pretty low. I tried to force down a hot dog at Buttermere checkpoint but ended up throwing it down the portaloo before I left. The uneasy wobbly feeling I get before feeling really dizzy had started and I left the check point feeling like I should have sat down for a few minutes to get myself together. But at the entrance to the fells I saw the sweeper bus arrive (to collect any runners dropping out). Maybe I was running a lot slower than I thought. So I hiked up through the woods alongside a noisy stream. The stream was a lot louder than I remembered and I realised that it was because I was not high enough up the valley and myself and the runner in front had taken a lower path that headed straight down to the water. We looked up to our left and saw the torches of other runners up the steep slope. We turned and scrambled up to meet the correct path. On the scramble, feeling very dizzy now I started to wonder what the fuck I was doing and considered turning back to the checkpoint. Twice more, while following the route onto the fells I stopped again, contemplating turning back. The next section has a very steep scramble over Sail pass and one I didn’t want to do with a feeling of vertigo. Another runner came past and asked if I was ok. When I explained he said “tuck in behind me and we can get to the next checkpoint together, then decide what to do.” Trying to take long calming breaths, but feeling really low and incredibly slow, I managed to get over to Braithwaite, the next village. I walked in the door of the check point and immediately asked the closest volunteer to remove my tracker.
As someone who is incredibly indecisive, when I’m running a long race like this I often just do everything by feel, trying not to dwell on things and just continually move forward figuring things out on the go. That’s why it’s such a horrible feeling when you decide to drop out, but then have to sit with it, literally, for hours while waiting to be taken off the course. In any other decisions in life you decide what to do and it feels like a weight being lifted. In this case, I find it the opposite. My shoulders feel heavy and I feel more conflicted over what I have done. Could I have carried on? Would the dizziness have passed? The medic and a cup of tea helped me feel better. I surprised the volunteers by declaring that I had my own teabags. Very few runners carry their own decaf in a race I expect. So that ended my goal races for 2025.
So the dizziness came back. Was it the dark, the stress, the pressure I put on myself. Was it not enough food, the headlights or can my brain just not handle long races anymore?
In February when I had a Mirena coil removed, I thought that I had solved the dizzy puzzle. I thought the dates and the times I’d started to get these migraines correlated. It seemed to ease off. But now maybe not.
Now here in October and back to removing all the supposed ‘triggers’ for dizziness I do feel better. I’ve started taking B12 supplements after a red flag showed on a recent blood test. I’ve entered Lakeland 100 again in 2026, looking for final redemption.
Of course, like an idiot I’ve also entered a longer race. Despite not being 100% or finishing any of the last 3 100-mile races I have had a place in, I now have a 200 on the horizon. On our way home from a trip to Cornwall in our campervan at Easter, I had received an email to say ‘Congratulations, you are being offered a place to participate in the legendary Tunnel Ultra’. I swore, and Andy almost crashed our shiny new van.