I’ve never had such a chilled out start to a race – sitting on the beach calmly watching the waves roll in. Pity we then had to get up and do a horrendously long run! Anyway, all the horrible details to come soon but for the time being I’ll say I finished the Vertical Etna in 5th place with a time of 4:24:02. I hit 33km just shy of 3 hours and spent the next 84 minutes finding out just how hard ‘running’ up a 15% slope of volcanic ash is! Despite the unforseen amount of power-walking the run was incredible, from the sea up through Sicily’s largest forest and then finally out onto the exposed volcanic terrain. One for the bucket list maybe?