þjóð

 June saw me taking my longest journey so far, flying three hours north and west to Iceland and the Midnight Sun Run.

I went to Iceland with my friend Matt, whom I met at a Halloween party last year, when he was dressed as Shaun (from Shaun of the Dead) and I wasn’t in fancy dress at all. He’d always had a hankering for the northernmost capital city in the world, and decided to tag along when I was travelling to Reykjavik.

“Working” predominantly as my support driver, Matt helped us get all over the city and the much famed Golden Circle. He was also chief beer carrier, and waited for me at the finish with a can- this might just be the thing that gave me the edge to get a PB on race day..!

During the race there wasn’t much chat, something I’ve found on lots of my races abroad. British runners tend to be up for a chat, especially those of us at the back of the field that will do anything to distract from the pain. Reykjavik was a fairly quiet affair. In fact, the only people I could hear talking were some American women. Truth be told, I found them a bit irritating at first, then I decided to chat to them and found their story pretty inspiring: They were old friends, having met at university and joined a running club together. Now living in the USA and the UK respectively, they meet in different cities to run races together and talk pretty much constantly the whole way round…!

Otherwise, we made various friends in various bars, watching the World Cup together and made use of a great apartment we found on airbnb – which is a bit like Couchsurfing, but not.