Chatting to BBC Radio 2 sports presenter Vassos Alexander is always great fun and inspiring. He discovered trail running at Keswick Mountain Festival in 2014 (he says it’s all my fault but he was already signed up to the half marathon before meeting me, not guilty!) and since then he has definitely become addicted.

Amongst tonnes of other trails in the south east, Vassos has run the Keswick Mountain Festival half marathon, the South Downs Way 100, the 250km Spartathlon Ultra in Greece, and the first half of the Dragon’s Back Race in 2017 (he will be back to finish the job in 2019).

Here he talks about his very enjoyable second book, Running Up That Hill, and shares some of the advice he learned from interviewing top trail and mountain runners like Kilian Jornet, Emelie Forsberg, Scott Jurek, Jasmin Paris, Marcus Scotney and Debbie Martin-Consani.

He also reveals how best to horrify your teenage kids while running – at about 5mins in…I had never heard of this move before. I’m so not hip. Or lit. Or whatever the yoot say these days.

If you buy Vass’ second book, Running Up That Hill by clicking on the book below then I get a tiny percentage at no cost to you. Thank you 🙂

And this is his first book is also great fun, start with that one if you haven’t read it already.

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