Another good week.

? Weeks until BG

22 weeks until lakeland 100

Mon – Nothing

Tues – 5 miles and 200m of ascent, on cockfield fell.

Wed – Nothing

Thurs – 12 miles, 800m of ascent, Hamsterley forest then home.

Friday – Nothing

Saturday – 5 miles 250m of ascent, Kinder Scout

Sunday – 27 miles, 3500m of ascent, BG leg 1 and 2.

Total of 49 miles and 4750m of ascent.

After giving myself a stern talking to last week I felt that I had to meet 2 targets this week. 3000m of ascent and 1 day over 8 hours of running. Both of which were achieved.

Ran home on the road from Hamsterley on Thursday and had a sore right foot on friday and sunday, hurt to walk, but not to run. I believe it was mild plantar fasciitis, didn't hurt to run so ran on Saturday with no obvious ill effects and on sunday it felt fine again. Lesson learnt though – don't do anything different, such as road running it will lead to problems!

Sunday Jim Mann took me out on BG leg 1 and 2, I find it hard to motivate myself for such a long run on my own, so it was good to have Jim along. Andy Charles came along for L2 and although he won't mind me saying he struggled with the first 2 climbs (courtesy of 2 silly direct lines pioneered by Jim) he coped very well considering it was his first time doing a full BG leg.

Times weren't quick, but leg times are here for the record. (23 hour schedule in brackets)

Skiddaw – 70 (83)

Great Calva – 44 (44)

Blencathra 64 (69)

Threlkeld 28 (30)

Clough Head 60 – including 4 minutes faff (58)

Great Dodd 36 (29) – silly slow line picked by Jim

Watson Dodd 9 (9)

Stybarrow 10 (9)

Raise 17 (18)

White Side 8 (8)

Lower Mann 14 (18)

Helvellyn 7 (6)

Nethermost 8 (10)

Dollywaggon 14 (12)

Fairfield 47 (41)

Seat Sandal 26 (24)

Dunmail 23 (24)

So Me and Jim ran at 21 hour schedule for L1 including picking a very silly and slow direct line off Skiddaw - my line this one, not Jim's, worth looking at again in the snow or the dry to make the screes more runnable. Jim, Andy Charles and I ran at around 23 hour schedule for L2 if you take off the silly slow line on Great Dodd.

Importantly for me I felt really strong after 2 legs, Jim jokingly suggested we carry on and do the whole round, I honestly think that I would have done if I didn't have to be at work on Monday.

A good week. Feel like I am back on track, next week I will do another 8 hour day and at least 3000m of ascent.

A lot is not enough. Must try harder.

2 weeks of blog this week – I didn't think last week was worth blogging about.

23 weeks till the lakeland 100

? Weeks till BG

Mon – Sat: Nothing, resting sore left heal and recovering from a cold.

Sunday – BG leg 4 reconnaissance with Jim. 13 miles, 1800m of ascent, kept cocking up the nav on the way to Wasdale, see picture. 3 cockups in about 5 miles is going some. But in our defence it was claggy and snowy, good to get a bit of climbing in the legs after a week off.

Total of 13 miles and 1800m of ascent – not enough.

Can you spot the 3 cockups? - prize for anyone who can explain cockup 2 to me - I don't know what we were thinking.

Mon – Nothing

Tue – BG L1 reccy – 13 miles, 1800m of ascent.

Wed – Run with Fiona around Langdale – 9 miles, 1200m of ascent.

Thursday – Clough Head reccy – 7 miles 800m.

Saturday – Kinder Scout run – 22 miles, 1400m.

Langdale running down The Band

Kinder Downfall blowing up.

Total of 51 miles and 5200m of ascent – biggest week for a long time (ever?)

Not a huge about to say this post except the obvious that the first week wasn't enough and the second was big.

I have managed my heal problem by running in my knackered old innov8 X-talons, which seems to have let it settle down despite the big week I have just had.

I thought I would take this week to look back on my highlighted issues from blog post 1.

• Not being prepared for running out of energy.  Sounds silly, but when I hit empty on the way to Bow Fell I collapsed so spectacularly that I must have done something wrong.  More days training on little or no food to get me used to it this time.

Mixed success with this, I have tried several runs on no food and generally bottled out and eaten something when I started to fall apart – I did manage 2.5 hours without food or breakfast a couple of weeks ago, so perhaps progress here – I will keep on with this over the next few weeks.

• Bad weather - don't set off in shit weather next time.  Have a small moveable team.

I reckon I can do a BG with a running team of 3 – L1/2, L3, L4/5 and I hope that I have 3 good enough guys who are reliable and generally available to put this plan in place.

• Pain killers, play around with paracetamol and ibuprofen to get used to how it works with me on long days.

Ibuprofen seems to work well – felt really strong on my 30 after a couple of Ibuprofen half way around, and this has fixed a small pain behind my knee cap on another occasion.

Good progress on all these points I think.

The other thing in blog post 1 was this.

•  “Not enough long training days, I didn't get out for over 8 hours enough times, so when I did, it was a shock to my system.  I figured if I could do 55 miles and feel fine, then I could get around the BGR, I was wrong.  More long days this time. “

I count a good training day as 8 hours+, looking back I see the rather disappointing tally of 1 good training day, and 1 day that came in at around 7 hours. Not good enough, I told Jim yesterday that I would be BG ready if I managed 6 good training days in the next 6 weeks and I do believe that. So that's the target. Six 8+ hour days in the next 6 weeks, then I am ready for the first spring weather window that comes up.

Something else that has been nagging away at me is that the BG gold training standard is 3000m of ascent a week. Counting up now I realise that of the last 12 weeks I have only managed 3000m of ascent 4 times. This is a body blow for me to realise this.

I thought things were going well with the training for the BG and writing the last 2 paragraphs makes me realise how I have been kidding myself.

Must try harder. I want to do other things, but feel I need to get round a BG first, I can't explain why, but it is something I need to do.

6 weeks good training and I have a chance.

Should have studied the Currickulum!

Mon – nothing

Tuesday – Sprint reps  on Cockfield Fell. 7 Miles, 200m of ascent.

Wednesday – nothing

Thursday – DFR hill reps, 6 miles, 500m of ascent

Friday – nothing

Saturday – Hamsterley run, 11 miles, 500m of ascent,

Sunday – 21 miles, 1000m of ascent – more on this later.

45 miles, 2200m of ascent.

Really busy with work this week, but managed to get out 4 times, so quite a good week. Not enough ascent, but a good workout on Sunday makes me fell like it was a decent week.

Not convinced by sprint reps, hard work and quite dull. Thursday reps were fun, turned up late so only did 4 sets, but felt strong. Saturday morning was fun to get out on a glorious winters day.

Sunday, I didn't want to drive all the way to the Lakes with the snowy road conditions and the early start, so decided to have a go at a silly idea of mine. A round of all the curricks on Hamsterley Common. For those of you who haven't met Stuart Ferguson, a currick is a pile of stones, the ones I had seen prior to today were like a well constructed cairn, about 5-6 feet tall, after today I think the definition is “a pile of stones, which may or may not have once been a well constructed cairn used by ancient shepherds, and perhaps might just be a couple of rocks on the floor.”

At around 10pm on Saturday night I started planning the route. Quickly realising I didn't know where the boundaries of Hamsterley Common were, I expanded my currick search to cover the whole east sheet of OL31 (Teesdale and Weardale). I found 15 Currick or Curricks marked on and with a bit of string reckoned the route was about 40 miles – see above, I didn't run 40 miles. That was the planning done.

Setting off at 7:30am the weather looked perfect, the ground conditions less so, with thick snow covering all the fells, I realised this was ridiculous, but fancied giving it a go.

Things were going well, at around 13 miles I started to get tired, trying to take a traverse around James's Hill rather than going up and over was a mistake, the running was atrocious, with deep drifts and gullys every few yards some drifts knee deep and some chest deep and requiring a swimming motion to get through. I was knackered, starting to get cold and on my own, 5 miles from the car it wasn't time to get exhausted so I plodded up to the top of James's hill and set off back to the car, disappointed but happy that the day hadn't ended up with a rescue or hyperthermia.

I got back to the car after 21 miles and 5:50 minutes.

It is only now, that I have looked at the second part of the route that I have realised that to pick up the extra curricks I was planning would have only been 5 or 6 miles longer than the direct route back to the car. I had mis-measured my route. Thinking it was 40 miles there was no way I was going to get round, so came home. Had I realised that my route was only 27 miles I would have plodded on through the snow and probably made it.

Bugger.

Anyone who has an interest in this sort of thing, I would appreciate it if you give me a few months to have another crack at this “OL31 (east sheet) Currick Round”, so I can complete the inaugural round and perhaps get rid of some of the disappointment of cocking up the planning so badly today!

Sunrise on the drive over

Currick 1, not in the right place, but looked like a currick

Currick 3, very curricky

The Ewestone currick - not a good currick.

Turning around, James's Hill, feeling pretty tired.