George Mills has just finished three months’ relentless winter training in Dullstroom, South Africa. “Eat. Sleep. Train. Not much else going on,” he says with characteristic bluntness of his time in the southern hemisphere. There he crunched through more than 30km per day, running at altitude, eating clean wholefoods and optimising rest with afternoon naps and deep sleep at night aided by blue-light glasses, ear plugs and an eye mask. It is a life of abstinence that Mills genuinely seems to enjoy.
“Dullstroom is a special place,” he says. “I personally love it, hence why I spend so much time there. There’s maybe a couple of coffee shops, a couple of restaurants, but it’s a small tourist town that’s essentially one road, one kilometre from bottom to top. We have a good gym setup, there’s some good trails to run on, and for me that’s all I need.”
