Ups and Downs

Once again a while since my last post and a five more races (maybe 4 in 8 days was a bit excessive) completed. After the Black Combe race I decided to do more fells as part of my general training. As it happened the West Cumberland Orienteering Club (WCOC) Warriors Holidays series was about to start – A series of six short fell races held on Thursday evenings with the competition of four of the six needed to qualify for the competition. This looked perfect as part of my training so enter into the unknown I did.

A familiar sight

Warriors Holiday Series – Leaps Lowp



The first run in the series Leaps Lowp was held in rapidly dropping temperatures and diminishing light and being only 2.8 miles was hard to pace. Gavin Patterson of Ellenbrough set of at a storming pace one I knew there was no way I could match so I let him go with Chris Knowles of CFR and Richard McGrath also of Ellenbrough. It turned out the pace was too much for Gavin whom I past before the second check point. The basic plan had been to keep the leaders in sight and follow them! This was going fine until rounding the corner before the climb to the final check point they had gone. Luckily Harry Jarret was there and pointed me in the right direction up a trod through the trees and I caught site of Chris ahead once more. My lack of climbing speed showed and the two leaders gradually pulled away on the final accent up Knock Murton. Richard pulled away from Chris on the final decent coming in first with Chris next and me a minute later in third. All in all a good night out and next week was on my home turf up the Hay.


Thursday 17^th March 02:00 and the sickness started, although it lasted only 12 hours or so the Hays Ho Down race was not going to happen for me and worse still the Workington to Keswick “walk” was only three days away.

Workington to Keswick Charity Walk

Would two days of carb loading be enough to restock the glycogen stores? A gentle run on the Saturday suggested maybe; but when the energy would go, as go it would, was hard to judge. The timings had been calculated for all the checkpoints and the organisers informed of the target time of around 3 hours 35 minutes now the only thing left to do was the run. So on a tepid, breezy damp morning at the legion in Workington I set off on the approximately 30 mile route to Keswick Moot hall. By the first checkpoint at Ullock, eight miles in I was ahead of schedule by three minutes (to be expected due to adrenaline) this was slowly increased to 4:30 minutes by the Loweswater checkpoint. Rounding the corner to towards Crummock the head wind hit with force this kept up with occasional showers all the way down Crummock and Buttermere until the start of Honister pass. This made the going tough but although I stopped gaining time, no time was lost. The ascent of Honister was not too bad until the last bit but my trusty support team supplied encouragement energy drinks and a banana for the walk up the last bit before the decent. This was the telling bit as it was hard to keep the pace up going down with tired legs especially after 22 miles covered. The last bit from Rosstwaite to Keswick felt like a slog but just managed to nip in under 3:30 with the official time of 3:29 (I made it 3:32…). Quite a good confidence boost for the rest of the season.

Silly Time

The Thursday after was the third in the WCOC Warriors series up Crag Fell which I ran on still tired legs on a glorious evening with an unfortunately poor turn out. Chris Knowles took some photos of the event but was saving himself for Causey Pike…



Deccent of Crag Fell



Causey Pike was on the Saturday with the usual high standard of runners and friendly supporters including Stu and Steve. Once again another totally different fell race the accent up rolling end was on all fours in parts followed by a brief reprise then onwards and upwards to Causey and the final scramble to the summit. The decent to the old mining road was too steep for my still weary legs with three runners passing me but on reaching the road the terrain turned to my favour being a gentle gradient and trail, I quickly re-passed the three but didn’t have quite enough to close the gap on anyone else. Pippa Maddams once again ran a superb race breaking the record by 12 seconds!



View from Causey on previous reccy



By the Sunday and the Grizedale Trail race I’d resigned myself to a slow time having run three races in the previous seven days. The weather was ideal with a light breeze, clear day for excellent views, no rain and a slight nip in the air. The race went well with the ups being hard as expected but the downs being easier than expected, so to come in eleventh just over the hour for the 9.5 mile course was an excellent result!

And Then...

Monday was a day off then on Tuesday a walk round Buttermere with Harry taking five and a half hours while trying to fill the lake with stones and sticks...

Robbinson in the distance?

The training is still not structured enough; with sporadic racing, intervals and temp runs but not enough long runs. Though it seams to be working OK for now with times still coming down… There are still over fifty days until Edinburgh and the 2:45 target which means a 6:15 pace on the Garmin. Before then there are 11 races or maybe I should call them tempo runs with a competitive edge as to race them all would be far from sensible – do I have it in me to hold back on some of them?

Some change will happen from this week with some pace structure being put into the training with the unfortunate consequence that I’ll have to miss some of the club nights. I missed the hill session with Tri-lakeland tonight as tomorrows fell run up Robinson will fit that training requirement! The session was substituted with a ten mile marathon paced run following the Cumberland Ale 10 route. The average pace of 6:19 was about right considering the 200m+ accent.