The Skoma blog
Notes on the work, the race, and the book.
Guides for building a better album, and stories about why the months of training deserve more than a camera roll.
How many days you actually need for the Camino Francés
The Camino Francés is 770 km, not a fixed 33-day itinerary. Do the arithmetic on the pace you can actually hold for a month, add the rest days the guidebook skips, and the honest number looks different from the one on the cover.
Training through a heatwave: what I change, what I refuse to change
Heat is a training load in its own right, and pretending your cool-weather pace still applies is how summer injuries happen. What I actually adjust when the forecast turns ugly — and the couple of things I don’t.
The recovery tools I’ve actually kept — and the one I’d sell a kidney for
I’ve bought most of the recovery gadgets a runner is told to buy — the massage gun, the creams, the ice, the compression everything. Here’s what actually earned a place in my routine, what got quietly retired to a drawer, and the one thing that’s saved my legs more than all of it.
The 5 fastest marathons to chase a personal best
A PR is won long before race day, but the course you pick still matters. Five flat, fast, well-run marathons — with elevation profiles, dates, typical weather, and exactly how to get in.
A running coach in your inbox: I gave Claude my Strava and a coaching brief
Strava records everything and interprets almost nothing. Here’s how a weekly brief, a Strava connection and Claude turn Sunday-night numbers into an honest coach’s read — and, just as importantly, where it stops short.
Most running supplements do nothing. A few actually earn their place.
The supplement industry sells runners a lot of expensive hope. Strip it back to the science and a short, unglamorous list survives — the handful of things with real evidence, and how to actually use them.
Two hours, broken: the marathon’s last great wall finally fell
For seven years a sub-two-hour marathon was the sport’s great “maybe” — possible in a lab-perfect demo, never in a real race. At London 2026, Sabastian Sawe made it count.
A finish-line photo deserves more than a camera roll
Why we built Skoma: the best photo you’ll take all year shouldn’t disappear into an album of 12,000 screenshots.
Designing a race-day cover that does the moment justice
The cover is the first thing you’ll see every time you pick the book up. A few small choices make it feel like a bound volume instead of a printout.
Turn months of marathon training into a book you’ll keep
Your training block is a story with a beginning, a middle, and a finish line. Here’s how to turn the whole arc into something you can hold.