Holiday Runnings

Whilst planing to visit my sister in law down in Yorkshire we decided to have a look around for any local races to run and plumped for the Spires & Steeples Challenge, a 26 mile run from Lincoln to Sleaford on Sunday. But then, Vikki decided she quite liked the whole parkrun thing, so we pencilled in a visit to Hull on Saturday morning, and then we found out there was an orienteering event on Saturday afternoon which might make for a fun family activity. It was looking like a very busy, active weekend.


As it turned out, Amy and Dave (who had agreed to look after the kids during much of this nonsense) arrived at East Park in Hull, only about a minute before the parkrun was due to start by which time I'd decided I couldn't really be bothered running so I mucked about with the kids and cheered when Vikki went past.


We all went up to the orienteering event in the afternoon which was jolly good fun - we did a couple of the available courses to rack up about 3km of running and about 1km of wondering around undergrowth thanks to a navigation error. Lachlan did one of the courses with us while the others mucked about and then everyone went for ice creams :-)


At some point on Saturday it also occurred to me that I possibly hadn't trained enough to run 26 miles and hadn't actually thought at all about what I might eat/drink during the run. Not exactly ideal preparation.


We had to get up early on Sunday to drive to the end (right past the start) so we could get a bus to the start so that we could then run to the end and then drive back to where we'd come from (right past the start point of the run again) which all seemed terribly complicated but was probably the easiest way of doing things, despite the worry of getting stuck behind a lorry on the way. After the bus ride (on which we chatted to someone who had done even less training than me), we found ourselves at Lincoln Castle, shivering in the cold, although it was fairly obvious it was going to get warmer later, and after some milling around it was time to set off over the cobbles and down the imaginatively entitled "Steep Hill". We set off a bit fast (the "plan" was to run around 10m/m pace to finish under 4:30) but it felt good and we were keeping pace with "100 mara Andy" and his mate, "Salomon Guy", although we did get slowed down slightly by "farty woman" until the path widened and we skipped past her. The route passed through a number of nice little villages, separated mainly by turnip fields, and it was a pleasant run with Vikki and me sticking together, but I started to feel a bit sore in the legs around mile 15 (at which point there also seemed to be an awful lot of stiles to climb) and was obviously slowing a bit by 17 where my pace was in the 10s and 11s. It became a bit of a struggle from then on, and when I realised that 4:30 wasn't on, I slowed to a walk for the last few miles - a part of me felt I should push a bit harder but the rest of me just wanted to enjoy a walk in the sun with the wife, and to make sure I didn't overdo it and hurt anything.


In the end we trotted over the line after about 4:49 which wasn't too bad for 25 and a half miles, all things considered. Yes, 25 and a half miles by my garmin, so not actually a marathon. To be fair, the organisers never referred to it as a marathon and pointed out it was a non-timed event, but someone had entered it on Fetch as a 26.2. In fact, the organisers route notes had it down as 26.75 miles, but I think that just came from totting up each sections mileage which was rounded to the nearest quarter so there was a bit of a discrepancy there. Not a problem as far as I'm concerned but a wee warning to any marathon chasers out there. The "hot and cold snacks, including soup" available for a small charge at the finish turned out to be soup and bread, but it was good soup so I won't complain.


Overall, it was a good day out. Nice weather, good company, nice route, well signposted and marshalled so little danger of getting lost. Slightly disappointed with my fitness but looking forward to the mile this weekend, and then the OMM after that. Hopefully, the DOMS will have passed by then.

Where's Magnus?

It's been a while since we had one of these....

Bennachie Hill Race 2011

"Oktoberrunfest" part 2 was the Bennachie Hill Race, 8 tough miles over one of North East Scotland's finest hills. Vikki and I started together but, as expected, I was slightly quicker to the top of the first climb only for her to pass me on the approach to Oxen Craig and then bomb ahead in pursuit of Rebecca (who narrowly beat her in the end). The weather held out and I was able to enjoy the views and spot some of the towns and villages (ok, so maybe that means I wasn't going quickly enough) as I ran across to Craigshannoch and then towards Mither Tap, where I caught up with John just as we began the long descent down the Maiden Causeway. I skipped past him and sped off down the hill, managing to overtake a few other runners including Cosmic Pauline. All too soon though, the course flattens out as it goes back through the forest and it felt like running through treacle. I think I was passed by a couple of people but overtook a couple on this section, so not too bad on balance, and I still had something left to pick up the pace after the final turn and overtake another bloke within sight of the finish. Crossed the line unhurt, with a smile on my face, and beat last years time by a couple of minutes, so very happy with my run. And very happy with the tea and cakes afterwards. Thanks very much to all the marshals and race organisers etc who put on a very enjoyable event. Congratulations to Mike on clinching the SRC Club Championship, and thank you to John and Rebecca for their company on the drive. Also good to see Neil, Gary, and Jim.

Stoney Stomp 2011

Ah, you can't beat a good stomp. For this year's Stoney Stomp, we agreed that Vikki would take the kids round the 5K route and I'd do the 7 mile run. I was hoping for a decent time - under an hour and preferably a PB - and started at a decent pace with Dod and Rhino powering up the hill ahead of me. Craig soon picked up the pace and went past me before the first corner and it wasn't too long before Rich and then John caught me and zoomed ahead. That left me running pretty much on my own for most of the race, with two younger guys behind who never really looked like catching me, and a lady in red in front who was never in danger of me catching her. I got a lovely surprise at the point where the 5k course rejoins the 7m one as I got there just before the rest of the family who gave me a wee cheer which propelled me up the final hill and towards the finish. The last mile (almost) of this race is downhill and it's always a blast - getting close to 6min/mile pace (hey, that's fast for me, ok?). After the finish Rich and I headed back up the course to walk in with your respective families, then hung about for a bit to see Rhino get her prize. The ceilidh in the evening was very much a family affair with lots of kids running around and having a great laugh. I don't think Magnus really got the proper steps but with a smile like this, it didn't really matter......

What a fun day!

Trains and Training in Sunny Staffs.

I'm not sure quite how it happened, but our holiday somehow became dominated by trains...

I may blog in more detail (or not, who knows?) but basically our holiday went something like:
Saturday - travelling in car, no trains involved.
Sunday - Great Hucklow Fell Race followed by a trip on the Churnet Valley Railway RailAleTrail
Monday - Went to visit Buxton and Poole's Cavern, lovely wee town with a nice park which had a miniature railway (on which we had a wee ride)
Tuesday - great fun at Alton Towers on all the big rides. Let's face it though, a rollercoaster is basically a variety of train (especially the Runaway Mine Train), as is the monorail that takes you to and from the car park.
Wednesday - visited Dovedale and went for a wee run. No trains involved.
Thursday - Alton Towers water park. Good but overcrowded and overpriced, I felt. Train count - nil.
Friday - Lovely visit to Rudyard Lake, complete with trip on a mini steam train. Followed by a jolly wee run down the Staffordshire Way.
Saturday - Back home, no trains.

OK, so maybe not that many trains, but it seemed like a lot to me. In any case, it was much fun and we had great weather, lots of decent food and far too much to drink. I'll maybe post some of the better pictures if I get round to it.

In other blob news, in order to try and attract a younger readership I've added Lachlan and Calum as authors of this blog so there might be some more regular posts. I plan to check everything they add before it gets published but don't want to censor them too much so no idea how it'll work out.

LAMM 2011 - Beinn Dearg

Thursday lunchtime last week, and the old F5 key took a bit of a bashing as I kept refreshing the LAMM web page to find out where I was going for the weekend. I'd more or less worked out that it had to be out near Ullapool or Gairloch based on the travel times, but it was great to get that confirmed and spend some time checking out maps and photos of the Beinn Dearg area - very excited by that point.

And it was a great weekend. I managed not to be too traumatised by the inevitable childbirth stories on the car trips and the girls were great travelling companions - thanks so much to Fiona for doing all the driving. Still, it's a long and winding road and I was glad when we reached the campsite and even happier to find M1nty who already had the tent up meaning that there wasn't much for me to do except register, buy a spork (I'd managed to forget mine) from the shop that sold everything you could need, and go for food and beer before bed.

We were woken by the sound of a piper in the morning and after breakfast, it was off to the bus to be taken to our starting point. I'm planning a longer blog post with more analysis, route details, lessons learned etc (as much for my future reference as for anyone else to read, but some might find it interesting) so for now, I'll just say that we set off for what turned out to be a tough, demanding, but highly rewarding day in the hills. There seemed like a lot of steep climbs, difficult terrain, river crossings etc., but the pay off was some fabulous views, a Munro (Seana Bhraigh) to be bagged, the company of a good friend and brief chats with many nice people. Throughout the day, I took on the role of navigator and marched off through the heather with map in hand and M1nty following a few steps behind. I think he was suffering more than I realised at the time, but kept pushing himself on - a great effort. By the time we were heading for the last couple of checkpoints - with mid-camp in sight - the weather turned against us and I made a couple of navigational errors, so we were delighted to get to the finish and get the tent up. My feet were cold and wet so I got into my sleeping bag as quickly as possible to warm up and then didn't get up until the next morning (cooking was done in the porch of the tent, greetings to Rhino and Fiona were done by shouting through the tent wall, and thankfully I didn't need to go to the loo so was able to stay cozy).

My bladder finally needed some attention at about 4am on Sunday so I was up early and got the water for cooking breakfast while the sun was still low in the sky but it was a beautiful dawn. At 5am, Martin (event organiser) started telling everyone about the sunrise (through a megaphone) and soon heads were popping out of tents and massive queues were forming for the toilets. Breakfast was cooked, the tent was struck, bags were repacked and we were away soon after 6:30, ready for another long day of scouring hill tops for orange flags - or so it seemed. After the first wee (relatively) climb, M1nty admitted that he was struggling with the terrain and wasn't sure how long he was going to be able to continue. We had a short break to talk it over and decided to continue, taking advantage of a path round the hill which was slightly longer but still got us to the first cp in good time. That was followed by a couple of km on a good track (we actually ran a bit here) before another steep climb and then I made a mistake which meant we overshot the cp. At this point, M1nty decided he really wasn't going to manage to complete the day - from a guy who has completed two 50+ mile races this year and who has shown his strength and determination many times, I knew it must have been a hard decision for him, but it was the sensible option so we plotted a route that would take us down a track to the road and back to the event centre - it continued to be a pleasant trip with chat and some lovely views of An Teallach. We were passed by a few pairs from the score class, including two lovely old ladies who I think had a combined age of 133!

Back at base, we did what we do best and tucked into some food and a couple of pints of beer until the prize giving - something I often don't get to see in races! As the prizes were being handed out, Liz and Jo finished strongly - they'd made up a few places from their position on Saturday and did brilliantly for a couple who claimed to have almost no idea how to use a compass. M1nty decided to go and thumb a lift to Inverness so we said our farewells, he set off, and the three of us who were left had some more beer, took down the tents and waited for Rhino and Fi to finish. They managed to stay out in the hills just long enough to get us worried, but just in time to get photos taken before the flags were removed. They'd had a tough time looking for one of the controls and were tired and a bit emotional but soon, we were on our way home.

So, strictly speaking, another dnf, but the way I see it, it was a fine weekend out in the hills, surrounded by stunning scenery, and in the company of good friends, and it just doesn't get much better than that!


(Pictures on this page courtesy of M1nty - my pictures here)

Cateran Trail Ultra 2011

http://cateran55ultra.webnode.com/

After a DNF at the Highland Fling a few weeks back, I was looking forward to this weekend with the usual mixture of excitement and nerves, but raised to the power of e. However, I knew the cut-off times were more generous for this one and when Karen told me "Just finish - don't worry how long it takes", I was determined to do just that, even if it meant walking most of the course.

mrs s had said she would run with me, at least for the first bit, so we set off together and soon found ourselves in a sort of spread out group with Jonathan, Minty and Karin, who was joined by hubby Bill at Glenisla. Soph, Jon and Adrian were never too far away either but Dave K seemed in a bit more of a hurry and pushed ahead.

Glenisla also marked our venture into the unknown as we'd never been on any of the course after that before - it was quite fun not knowing what was coming round the next corner, although it was mainly cows, sheep, cow poo or sheep poo. Somewhere around here we also caught up with Neil and had a good blether with him.

The run down to Alyth was fairly uneventful except for starting to feel a bit tired, and hearing much shouting up ahead as Soph caught up with flip. Jonathan and Minty reached the check point at Alyth and shot through quite quickly, whereas I wanted to take a bit of time to slurp down a Muller Rice, so I suppose this was the point where I knew mrs s was going to stick with me as she waited also when she could easily have gone on. We also got an update on Mike and Andy who were in 4th and 5th at the time.

When George and the legend that is "Razor" McCurdy arrived at the check point I knew it was time to get going and we set off with flip for company - sadly, he was struggling a bit and we pushed on ahead towards Blairgowrie. Not very far ahead it turned out as he caught us up again when we stopped for a couple of minutes to take photos at the wooden spider web in the woods. At the other side of the woods, we started the long tarred descent into Blairgowrie - fun and fast on fresh legs, but not so easy on my tired pins so it was a relief to get down to the bottom and escorted across the road to "Happy Checkpoint". Another shortish break there and we were off again, back on the Cateran trail proper and starting to head North, towards the finish.

For most of the section to Bridge of Cally, we could see George and Ray, Soph and the McKendricks somewhere ahead of us so we were in lukewarm pursuit mode. We took a slight wrong route past a farm where the correct path was between two fields but we went down the edge and had to climb over a barbed wire fence. I didn't notice at the time, but I now have a nasty cut across the back of my calf. We caught up with Soph and jogged along with her, chatting away so much that I didn't see a stone sticking out of the path - before I knew it I was falling but pulled off a neat forward roll and sat up thinking "Game Over". A few seconds later, I was back on my feet and we were running down the track - it turned out that the pain wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had thought it was going to be, and the adrenalin kick was brilliant.

At BofC, I had to laugh when Jane offered us some flapjacks - they were made following the brilliant recipe that Vikki uses but unfortunately I'd already had my fill of them for the day so had to refuse. Carolyn was there as well with the news that Dave had lost some time due to a wee detour but was still going strong about 10 minutes ahead, Minty and Jonathan were still together a bit further ahead and that Mike and Andy had been 3rd and 4th. I had a Muller Rice to eat, but mrs s didn't want to waste too much time, so I decided to eat it on the move since there was a bit of uphill coming anyway.

The weather was starting to turn a bit nasty (down to the fact that flip had pulled out of the race) but we walked and jogged on through the drizzle, looking out for the point where Mike had gone wrong last year. We were generally trailing Jon Cornall at this point but went past him on a sharp little incline and realised we could now see the McKendricks and George and Ray up ahead and we slowly overhauled them which felt like we were making good progress. George told us that he'd got a text from Mike who had finished in 3rd place which was great news. The weather continued to worsen as we reached Kirkmichael where we passed Dave having a short stop under an umbrella with Carolyn. No such luxury for us so onward, ever onward on the short trip to Enochdhu with only a brief stop to put on waterproofs since it was chucking it down now.

Enochdhu was the last checkpoint - we'd been looking forward to it because mrs s had a can of gin and tonic in it, kindly donated by George who had a few of his own in different drop bags. It tasted great and knowing we only had sixish miles left, we set off up into the woods, and up towards the pass at An Lairig. We had George's company for much of this section which he told us was one of the most scenic parts of the course - not that we could see very much as we were up into the clag and if it hadn't been for the thought of finishing, it could have been pretty miserable. Dave passed us again, looking strong, mrs s was detailed to check the bothy for dead bodies but found none, and eventually the path levelled out and then started to go down. The steep path down was wet and treacherously muddy - it could have been great fun on a clear day with fresher legs but I took it fairly cautiously to avoid any mishaps. Once under the cloud level, we could see the roof of the hotel (a truly heart warming site) and knew the finish was close. mrs s was running ahead a bit - I came round a corner to see her waving at me to hurry up and shouting "They're all waiting at the hotel". Sure enough, I could make out people and hear a few shouts of encouragement so I picked up the pace a bit (the increased arm action caused drops of water to fly off my gloves, it was so damned wet) and we held hands down to the final gate and through the finish line in front of the hotel, straight into the arms of Karen.

It was such a good feeling to finish and to see so many friends. There were congratulations and handshakes and hugs and people taking photos, and then we were ushered into the bar so that we could start the recovery process....where there was another huge round of applause, and many more congratulations, not only from friends and other people involved in the race, but also from complete strangers who happened to be in the hotel that evening. I don't think I'm the only one who felt slightly overwhelmed by it all - it really was quite touching.

After a hot shower, it was time for a few drinks and the presentations - every finisher got a fantastic engraved quaich to go with the high quality goody bags that were handed out at registration - then food and more drinks and chat until tiredness finally got the better of us and we headed for bed.

What a great weekend! Huge thanks to Karen for putting on a fabulous wee race, and thanks to all the marshals and support crew for helping with drop bags, dispensing hugs, offering advice and encouragement, stopping traffic, and generally looking after all us runners. You guys were all brilliant. I also want to say thanks to the owners and staff at the Spittal hotel who were so accommodating to a huge bunch of smelly, wet, tired runners. But most of all, thanks to mrs s for running with me and keeping me going whenever I got a bit low - I'm not sure I could have done it without you, babe.