Monday 30 January 2012

Lunch at Dinner

Mon – Rest
Tue – 4 miles on the fell with Fiona
Wed – Climb
Thurs – Durham Fell Runners on Tour (Cockfield Fell!) 8.7 miles
Friday – Rest
Saturday – Lunch at “Dinner” By Heston Blumenthal, then Cirque Du Soleil
Sunday - 4.5miles around Finsbury Park.

Total of only 17 miles.

I wasn't planning on doing much this week after the long run I had last Saturday, I was pleased that I could walk straight after the way I felt on Sunday morning, everything felt fine except for my right achilles which wouldn't stretch, even far enough for me to put my heal on the ground. That has got better all week and felt fine by tuesday for a steady run.

After that I fell remarkably good.

Thursday was great fun showing DFR my local stomping ground, we all got good and muddy and the locals didn't let our tyres down when we were out running, so a huge success! Thanks to everyone who turned out.

Saturday saw the culmination of my 30th Birthday celebrations, driving to london to have lunch at “Dinner”. Magnificent. This blog isn't about food, it's about running, so I won't say much but it was a cracking good feast. Went to see Totem by Cirque Du Soleil later, again magnificent, one of the best Cirque shows I have seen and a wonderful experience.

Meat Fruit - is it meat or is it fruit???

Spit roasted pineapple - delicious!



Sunday, 4.5 miles around finsbury, not much to say about that.

My left achilles is giving me some grief, feels bruised, not a problem when on long runs, but feels sore in work shoes and on short runs. Invested in some Inov8 Baregrips so will try them out on thursday and report back. I am on the look out for some super comfortable work shoes, something black and cheapish, might get some vibram fivefingers, but not sure if they will put pressure on the sore left achilles? Any thoughts???

Thanks for reading, back on it next week if work allows it!

Andy  

Monday 23 January 2012

30@30, 30 Wainwrights on my 30th Birthday

? Weeks till BG
27 Weeks will Lakeland 100.

Monday – Taper
Tuesday – 5 easy miles with Fiona on Cockfield Fell
Wed – Fri – Taper
Saturday – 35.9miles, 9:51min, 3000m of ascent.
Sunday – Rest.

Total of 41.9 miles and 3000m of ascent – a good week!

Anyone who runs with me should know that I had 3 objectives for this year, number 1 of which was to run 30 Wainwrights on my 30th Birthday, which fell on January 21st 2012. I planned to attempt this, whatever the conditions as a way of sharing my birthday with some of my closest fell running friends and as a small nod to great fell runners who complete 50 at 50, 60 at 60 and so on.

I spent friday night sleeping in a camping barn laying awake listening to the wind howling around the building, things didn't sound good. The weather forecast warned of whiteout conditions and severe buffeting on higher ground. When we got to our starting point, Park Foot Caravan park, Ullswater, 469 233 the peaks were visible and although the wind was strong, it didn't feel as strong as forecast so I set off hoping that the forecast was wrong and things would turn out fine.

Myself, my wife – Fiona Blackett, Jim Mann, Duncan Archer and Pippa Archer (who had to turn back during leg 1 with an old injury) all set off on the climb of Arthurs Pike reaching it bang on schedule. As we got higher the wind got stronger and started causing problems at High Raise (not the High Raise BGer's will know), we stumbled to the summit and Jim insisted on us posing for a photograph so that he could tweet. I have to admit that I am converted to the idea of tweeting during fell running challenges, as it brings long distance fell running about as close as anyone could imagine it to being a spectator sport. That said, as things got tougher, the frequency of tweeting was drastically reduced.
Duncan, myself and Fiona holding on for our lives on the top of High Raise!


The climb of High Street was only interrupted by a snowball fight with team Blackett triumphing over team Mann/Archer who beat a hasty retreat to the relative safety of the windswept summit. After that things went well enough, we only had to crawl to a couple of summits, until the descent to Kirkstone Pass when a vicious hail storm made for a rather painful end to leg 1 which came with a very welcome rest and bowl of soup in the Kirkstone Pass Inn.

Leg 1 complete 10 minutes up on schedule.

Leg 2 started on schedule, after a slightly longer than anticipated pub stop, with the climb of Red Screes which was in the shelter of the westerly wind and passed without incident. Jim was the only runner with me for Leg 2 after everyone else pulled out for a variety of reasons. After Red Screes the wind didn't let up for the rest of the run. The trot down to Middle Dodd felt like a real fight trying not to get blown back to the pub several hundred metres below. At the summit of Little Hart Crag we passed a couple of walkers who were stopped in their tracks by the wind on the short scramble to the summit. High Pike brought some rest as it has a rather convenient 6 foot high wall which protects the path from the wind. Fairfield was almost laughably difficult to reach the summit with a mixture of crawling and walking over the summit plateau to eventually reach it. The descent to Great Rigg was good running, with a wide grassy path and an even wind that wasn't gusting.

At this point I figured the wind wasn't going to get much worse, I was feeling strong, we were on schedule and with only 2 significant climbs left thoughts turned to the possibility of success for the first time. With little else to worry about on the descent I got a little emotional inside my ski goggles which I had been wearing since Red Screes thinking about how most of my 30 peaks were now behind me. I now knew that if the wind wasn't any worse over Helvellyn I would finish my 30.

Jim took a tumble on the traverse from Great Rigg to Grisedale Tarn, but landed on his feet after a second or two when he looked like he might end up at the bottom of the valley 300m below. We took 5 minutes for some food and a sit down at the bottom of Seat Sandal, then climbed it strongly to reach the top on schedule. On the descent of Seat Sandal we noticed the bright orange shelter which turned out to be Dom and Sarah with hot Ribena waiting for us – a real boost before the steep climb to Dollywaggon.
Enjoying a warming Ribena at Grisedale Tarn 
Looking a bit happier as we head for Dollywaggon.

The top of Dollywaggon is at the summit of a steep spur with a drop on 3 sides, today it would have to be approached with caution, me and Jim took it in turns to play dodge the gusts, tag the summit and retreat to the safety of the path. Nethermost came and went, Helvellyn was a little tricky due to the ice around the trig point which warranted some caution on the approach to ensure that a gust didn't take us both down to Red Tarn.

After this it was just a case of getting home, I have never enjoyed a stretch of running as much as the section from White Side to the end, at times the wind was behind us and we could let off the breaks and sprint down the grassy descents at, what my watch tells me was 5 minute mile pace, but felt a lot faster! The final climb of Great Dodd was wonderful, the wind had swung around to the SW so was directly behind us and we managed to keep at a steady run all the way up the 80m climb to the summit.

The plan was always to try and finish before head torches were necessary, and we managed it by the skin of our teeth, perhaps pushing a little too hard as we raced my dad to the car park and nearly ran straight into a gate! Dad had come along the coach road to meet us, which was really appreciated, it really meant a lot that he had braved the wind to stand around and see us home.

Huge thanks to Fiona, Duncan, Pippa and especially Jim for supporting me the whole way around – it would have been a very different day without you Jim.

Special mention to Clive who made the trip to the Lake District and was unable to run due to a chest infection – next time Clive!

Huge thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate my success in the camping barn afterwards, especially mum for providing everyone with such fantastic food.

I finished my run, not with a big outpouring of emotion, but with a massive feeling of contentment with a job well done. I hope others follow my route and try to better my time for running these, or any other set of 30 Wainwrights, and to this end I post my timings here and I will post details of the route on gofar.org.uk. My route took 9:51, road to road, (2 minutes up on my schedule), I am sure this is easily beatable in better conditions, and I would love to hear from anyone else who attempts it.






30 schedule
Time for leg
Time of day

Start

07:21 AM
1
Arthur's Pike
35:48
07:57 AM
2
Bonscale Pike
10:21
08:08 AM
3
Loadpot Hill
16:50
08:24 AM
4
Weather Hill
10:00
08:34 AM
5
High Raise
26:39
09:01 AM
6
Kidsty Pike
07:29
09:09 AM
7
Rampsgill Head
06:23
09:15 AM
8
The Knott
05:01
09:20 AM
9
High Street
17:53
09:38 AM
10
Mardale Ill Bell
09:30
09:47 AM
11
Thornthwaite Crag
16:50
10:04 AM
12
Caudale Moor
21:50
10:26 AM

Kirkstone Pass
24:27
10:50 AM

Rest
26:30
11:17 AM
13
Red Screes
20:20
11:37 AM
14
Middle Dodd
06:39
11:44 AM
15
High Hartsop Dod
22:38
12:07 PM
16
Little Heart Crag
13:33
12:20 PM
17
High Pike
27:13
12:47 PM
18
Dove Crag
18:02
01:05 PM
19
Hart Crag
10:28
01:16 PM
20
Fairfield
20:43
01:37 PM
21
Great Rigg
11:30
01:48 PM

Rest
05:00
01:53 PM
22
Seat Sandal
29:38
02:23 PM

Rest
04:00
02:27 PM
23
Dollywaggon Pike
26:21
02:53 PM
24
Nethermost Pike
16:34
03:10 PM
25
Helvellyn
11:46
03:21 PM
26
White Side
22:50
03:44 PM
27
Raise
07:38
03:52 PM
28
Stybarrow Dodd
17:42
04:10 PM
29
Watson's Dodd
09:07
04:19 PM
30
Great Dodd
11:06
04:30 PM

High Row – West of Dockray
43:09
05:13 PM

Total
09:51:28

Monday 16 January 2012

This boot is made for walking?

1 Week until 30@30
? Weeks until BG
28 Weeks until Lakeland 100

Monday - Blogging
Tuesday – 15.5 miles, 600m of ascent, Hamsterley Forest.
Wednesday – Climb
Thursday – 9.5 miles, 500m of ascent, Hill reps.
Friday – rest
Saturday – 10 miles, 400m of ascent, walk in Teesdale.
Sunday – 6 miles, 300m of ascent, Clay Bank East Race.
Total of 41 miles, 1800m of ascent – nice steady week for a taper.

Not a huge amount to say about this week, taking it easy leading up to my 30th Birthday extravaganza next weekend, which you can read about next week.

Tuesday night was lovely to be out without any wind, 15.5 miles in a tshirt, no hat or gloves felt quite strange after all the rotten weather I have run through.

Thursday felt hard, went off too fast and didn't make much of a showing on rep 3 or 4, not a problem, felt pretty fit.

Saturday was a walk over 3 Durham Hewitts, 4, 5, and 6 on this diagram. http://www.gofar.org.uk/DurhamHewitts.html
Vague idea of doing the round of Durham Hewitts at some point this year, so nice to get out to look at 3 of them, rough going but all runnable in that section. Only point to note from Saturday was that I put on my walking boots for the first time in about a year, and my sore achilles was very sore in my boot, so I walked about 5 miles wearing only 1 boot, no ill effects from this to report!
Atop Burhhope Seat with only one boot!

Sunday was Clay Bank East race, which I came 2nd in last year, 5th this year but 4'30” faster than last year, and with a time that would have won any of the last 3 years feels like a decent result.

Easy week coming up, easy run on Tuesday and Thursday then 30 peaks, 34 miles, 3500m of ascent and hopefully a lot of fun on Saturday!

Monday 9 January 2012

Run like a Panda

2 Weeks until 30@30
? Weeks until Bob Graham
29 Weeks until Lakeland 100

Monday – Drove home from parents house.
Tuesday – 2.75 miles 100m of ascent on Cockfield Fell, hummm... This felt like a pretty poor effort fighting against the wind and giving up after 20 minutes. Until Wednesday.
Wednesday – all ready to go out and then it started raining, combined with another bout of storm force winds I stayed in and played with my new iphone rather than go out for the planned 10 miles.
Thursday – 6 miles, 350m of ascent, pyramid rep session at Hamsterley.
Friday – rest
Saturday – 16.5 miles, 1500m of ascent, Bob Graham Leg 3.
Sunday – 14 miles, 850m of ascent, 30@30 leg 1.

Total of 39.25 miles, 2800m of ascent. Not enough.

Not much to say about the first half of the week, not much done, I was fed up with fighting against wind and rain and planned a couple of long runs which didn't really happen.

Thursday was the feared pyramid rep session with a novel twist this time, the idea was to run up hill really fast and then pretend you were and animal on the way down, or were we supposed to be thinking about an animal, or moving like the animal. I am assured there was a point to this. The stress of pretending to be a giant panda and then realising that I wasn't as big as everyone thought I was caught up on me eventually and after leading every significant rep up to the end of the 3rd set I was first beaten by Mike, then by Fiona, then rather than suffer any more, I jogged home and let everyone else get on with it. Great session, really good to have 5 people fighting for every rep, and an extra person in the mix when Fiona decided to play along!

Saturday was an early start, which I hate, but don't mind if it is for a run. Running with Mike, Brian and Liam was more like a tour of Grasmere's cafes with a bit of running thrown in than going out for a run. That said, it was a great day out out and back on BG leg 3, as far as Rossett Pike, with the highlight being Mike looking at the map on the top of Steel Fell and declaring confidently that we were heading to Great Dodd next, while pointing at Calf Crag. Only after it was pointed out that he was looking at the wrong map, did he realise his mistake. Sorry Mike.

Sunday was out and back on L1 of my 30@30 route with Fiona and Duncan, pretty rotten weather but felt really strong and took 20 minutes out of my schedule in under 2 hours, so good to know I have a lot of slack built into the plan for 21st January.

Not enough miles or ascent this week especially as I planned on this being the last big week before tapering down for 21st January, but it has made me think about finding the balance between going out running with other people – more fun, and going out on my own – more miles.

Follow the progress of my 30 peak round on Twitter, #30at30.

Thanks for reading.

Andy