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.

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 30^th 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  

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 30^th Birthday, which fell on January 21^st 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

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 30^th 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 2^nd in last year, 5^th 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!

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 3^rd 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 21^st January.

Not enough miles or ascent this week especially as I planned on this being the last big week before tapering down for 21^st 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