Puerto Vallarta is a beach resort city on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It’s a popular destination for those seeking sun, water sports, and nightlife. But it’s not exactly known for its trail running.

I had been to Puerto Vallarta many times over the years to visit my sister who lives in the area, but it wasn’t until a visit in 2018 that I discovered this little gem that has since become my favourite local trail.

In the fall of 2018, I travelled to Italy to test myself against the world-famous Tor Des Geants – a 200 mile (330km) trail run with over 24,000m of ascent. I carried a camera to document my journey.

Join me for the premiere of my 45-minute documentary “Tor Des Geants, Among the Giants of the Alps”. After the screening there will be a Q&A with me, along with some great prizes from Salomon.

Starting in Courmayeur, the 330 km Tor Des Geants follows two popular trekking routes in the Italian Alps. The course heads counter-clockwise on the Alta Via 2 along the south side of the Aosta valley for the first half of the race, returning along the Alta Via 1 back to Courmayeur.

There are 43 aid stations along the way, along with 6 major life bases, where runners can eat, sleep and obtain medical care if needed, with a cut off time of 150 hours.

This was my first 200+ mile race, although not my first experience with multi-day racing, having run the Grand to Grand stage race. But there’s an added layer of strategy with single-stage races of this distance, in that it’s totally up to you when and how much you sleep. There’s also the 24,000 metres of climbing to contend with – much more than any race I had run before.

The Loowit Trail circumnavigates Mount St. Helens in Washington State, past old-growth forests, waterfalls, meadows, and the leftovers of the volcano’s 1980 eruption.

A group of us ran the roughly 30 mile trail in August of 2018, starting from Climber’s Bivouac Campground. Watch the video below.

The Suunto Spartan Collection is the newest line-up of multisport watches, building on the success of Suunto’s Ambit series. After training for several years first with a Suunto Ambit 2, then an Ambit 3 Sport, and finally an Ambit 3 Vertical, I was pretty excited to get my hands on their top-of-the-line Suunto Spartan Ultra recently so I could put some of the new navigation features to the test.