Welsh whiteout

No long run or BG recce this weekend, but a walking trip to Wales. As it turns out, this was not the time to have gone to Cumbria anyway as the whole country was in a blizzard and The Lakes affected particularly badly. There'll be no running on those tops for now. Wales saw planty of snow too: I almost had to spend the night stuck on a high road in mid Wales behind a queue of stranded traffic and an impassable road but was fortunate to escape, take a long loop round and end up at the digs in Barmouth, which was not the original destination which was a bunkhouse in Bethesda which was cut off without electricity in the weather. I was grateful for a warm home and a bed for the night! After all that, we decided the walking should be cautious and mid level, so on Saturday we walked in the foothills of Cader Idris, clocking up 18 miles and being thoroughly blasted by the raw winds. Sunday's walk took us around 8 miles near Llyn Mwyngl, Bird Rock, Castel Y Bere, and Mary Jones's cottage. Back to the running tomorrow.

It's still snowing!

Well last weekend's recce was fun ... a good practice at navigating anyway. We changed the plan of doing leg 4 first thing as the weather forecast looked against us for the early morning, especially with navigating some less familiar territory, So we parked at Honister and resolved to do two loops with Honister in the middle and thus an option to cut the whole thing short if things turned bad. Luckily the first loop was good, so we did both. So first was a route cross country to Windy Gap, then the end of leg 4 over Green Gable, Brandreth and Grey Knotts. We had 100m visibility for the first part and snow cover everywhere above 500m, so map, compass and intuition were our only friends. Never totally confident, we nevertheless hit the route bang on, making the route over the last part of the leg sweeter. A quick bite at the car, then we headed up the relentless haul of Dale Head for a look at the 3 hills of leg 5. Here the running was better than the other side of the road and we made decent progress to Hindscarth and Robinson, before heading back, missing the dog leg to Hindscarth this time. So a changed plan turned out very well after all; just as well when you've driven over 250 miles for the privilege!

Recce 16 March

Recce Saturday 16 March
Leg 4
Start Brackenclose car park, Wasdale, 8am
Return via Moses Trod
Pub to follow!

Under 100 !

Now less than 100 days to go. That's just an arbitrary number of course, but so are 24 (hours) and 42 (peaks) and those are the ones I've chosen to live with for the next few months. So that's fine then. We like the numbers. We love the numbers!

Hopefully a recce this coming weekend if absence-of-snow reports from those closer to the fells are positive. Really looking forward to it ....

Hobble on

A great run on Saturday to round off an otherwise average running week: Wuthering Hike, or Haworth Hobble as it's also known, was a good test of stamina and hardiness at 32 miles and 4,400 ft of climb over Yorkshire hills and trails, and I came through unscathed with a marginal PB of 5:53. When I've run this before I have tended to run fairly hard before blowing up towards the end, whereas this year I started steadily and kept a reasonable pace through to the end. Whilst by no means a fast run then, it was important in BG terms as an exercise in keeping on keeping on. Freezing rain, thick mud, one slip on a greasey section, overtaking more than being overtaken, good practice at continual eating, and a steady and sustainable climb up Stoodley Pike without the usual near collapse at the top, all made for an enjoyable and satisfying run. I've also gained another couple of team members in Edwin and Phil over the weekend, so the team tally's looking good too. The 100-days-to-go point draws near, so the training has to begin to be more dependable and consistent from this point. A BG recce next weekend and the Fellsman on the horizon in April are good interim targets ....

Well that's February gone then!

This week has been slightly down on mileage but good nonetheless: a good steady run instead of the usual club night interval run and which felt infinitely more worthwhile for the kind of training I need, and a great off-road long run yesterday involving many new trails including part of the Swans Way footpath (Salcey Forest to Goring on Thames), an infuriating interlude getting lost in Milton stupid Keynes, and a final stretch on the Grand Union Canal to the rendezvous with Vicki and my lift home.

Miles this week: 43, including 27 mile long run

Miles for February: 169 running, 32 bike

Update on team:
Leg 1: Barnesy
Leg 2: Jarv, Rae
Leg 3: Deasey
Leg 4: Mick P
Leg 5: Tim S