If you had handed me a 2026 bingo card back in 2018 when I set up this little corner of the internet, I’m fairly certain none of the stamped squares would have made a lick of sense.

Eight years is a funny stretch of time. Long enough to trick yourself into thinking you got a steady rhythm, right up until life decides to tip the board over, scatter the pieces across the floor and discover how fast you can pick them up on tired legs.

Much has changed for me personally and the global backdrop has been full of unprecedented events. We have survived lockdowns, watched the world go completely remote, navigated the economic whiplash and adapted to an era where the news cycle moves faster than a hound catching a deer scent across an open field.

I’m currently in the throes of major home renovations and we’re living on a literal building site, the chaos that comes from tearing three walls off your quiet safe haven, navigating skips, builders and continual dust settling on running shoes which comes hand in hand with that special kind of vertigo of extending a living space and the continual battle of stepping over rubble, timber and plasterboard just to go outside and lace up my shoes.

And then there is the stuff you don’t measure in building dust or headlines, the strike outs and additional lines in an ever-growing personal ledger.

You don’t spend eight years running down trails, carrying the shifting weight of family, career and time ticking steadily forward without altering how you look at the horizon. You start thinking less about arbitrary finish lines and more about the kilometres I’ve been lucky enough to cover while I still have breath and legs to do it. In many ways I guess it’s the unmistakable, mid-life reckoning: a stark reminder that none of it lasts forever, and a decision to carry things that truly define you out into the open. The hounds by your side, the hills ahead and the quiet resolve etched into a journey to make every step count while the clock ticks forward.

Which brings me back to this little corner called Canicross Routes.

Beneath the bonnet this blog has become a bit like the house, a living archive of eight years of tinkering, held together by stubborn optimism and digital gaffer tape. What started as a straightforward place to log handy woodland, open fields and rolling hill running routes mostly so the dogs wouldn’t get wedged in a stile has slowly morphed. Over time, those modest 5k canicross outings have been swallowed by 30km training blocks, 50km ultramarathon survival diaries and long, solitary miles spent unravelling life in my own head.

Yet sitting right at the top of the browser is a domain name which stubbornly announces one very specific, very narrow thing: Canicross Routes.

It has served its purpose in an amazing way, has found me connections which I never would have had otherwise and friends who continue to elevate me of which I am truly grateful and still humbled by the support they offer but like an old pair of trail shoes with the tread worn completely smooth I have outgrown it. When the world outside has spun on its head, the house is in pieces and the perspective you carry onto the trails has fundamentally changed, trying to cram every creative thought, race reflection, and life ramble into a box labelled purely for dog running routes feels absurd.

The hounds are not going anywhere, they are still dictating the mud ratio and claiming priority on the sofa and I am still as passionate about running with them as I was back in 2018 when I started that passage of my running life but I want the canvas just to be a bit wider.

Which leads me nicely to the core of this post, Canicross Routes in name is going to be retiring and will in time morph into something a little more personal and varied, as who doesn’t need a space where I can publicly scream into the void to a readership I reckon is about 30 people, but then this never was about clout or likes. It’s time for the name to match the reality of where my feet actually take me. Not neat. Not predictable, and definitely not tarmac.

Just a Path Unpaved…