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Up and down (Running)

Wednesday 09 June 2010 05:35PM

This summer I made the decision to do pretty much no climbing, and as much mountain running as I could. Next summer I’ll probably be living in Brussels, so I thought I’d make the most of a summer in the hills before heading for the flat-lands.

So far my form has been very erratic, with some races being exactly what I wanted from my summer, and others being a complete nightmare leaving me wondering why I bother. I opened my account at Kinder Downfall where I ran pretty well to get second, but was still slower than I’d managed as a 19 year old and was soundly beaten by Dave Aucott. Next race was the English Champs race at Coniston. I started well, shadowing the leading runners on the first steep climb, but soon started to feel like my legs had been filled with lead and have half the field pass me before the finish. I’ve never failed to score in a championship race before, but there’s a first time for everything and I jogged in in 53rd position, just outside the series points, but feeling like I had nothing to give.

Performing badly is always a challenge to the psyche, especially when there is no obvious reason for it, so I took a few days rest and then tried to re-boot my motivation.

A week later and I headed over for the Carneddau race in North Wales, not such a strong field as at Coniston, but a great course. Again I felt weak and tired on the first big climb up Carnedd Dafydd, but then got a second wind from nowhere and started climbing well going up Carnedd Llewelyn, getting the leaders back in my sights, then descending well from the summit, going from 3rd at the top to 2 minutes ahead at the finish, and taking 5 minutes off the previous record. Perhaps it was worth spending a summer focussing just on running after all?

The next race for me was a biggy, the infamous Jura fell race, renowned as the roughest and steepest race in Britain; the fact that the record is over 3hrs, and the race is only 16 miles, says it all! I’d been to Jura three times before, once as a 3 year old when my dad ran the race, and twice more to run the 3 paps in the Scottish Island Peaks Race. I didn’t remember much about the race from my first visit, but remembered enough from my two runs round the island peaks race to know that I needed more time reccying the route – there are countless places where knowledge of the terrain means you can take a relatively fast route where following the obvious route from the map would see you floundering in large, unrunnable scree.

So Hil and I planned for a week’s holiday up on the islands, catching the train to Ardrossan then making our way to Jura by bike and ferry before spending a few days reccying the course and relaxing into the island pace of life.

We were blessed for the first half of the week with perfect weather and no midges, and took full advantage, walking the Glen Rosa horseshoe on Arran, then cycling/ferrying to Jura before walking the Jura race route two days later. Walking the route was a real eye opener to how much faster you go in races than when walking – I was planning to run the race in around three and a half hours, and yet it took us 12 hours to walk it at what felt like a decent pace! With the route fresh in my mind we chilled out for a few days, visiting the beautiful beaches on the west coast, doing a bit of cycling and visiting a display garden. By Saturday morning I was completely psyched to race, but the weather had changed to thick mist and rain.

I don’t normally get the chance to recce races beforehand, but doing so is a tremendous advantage, not only are you less likely to go the wrong way, but you can plan a strategy in your mind beforehand, visualise what it will feel like to be racing at different points of the race, and be free to run your own race instead of having to follow someone else’s pace because you don’t know the way.

The Jura race route runs out to the famous paps over 3 smaller hills, before climbing and descending each of the three paps, then adding in an ascent of Corra Bheinn as a short, sharp sting in the tail before the 3-mile road section leads you back home to Craighouse. I told myself I wasn’t going to start racing until the summit of the first pap, and started the race accordingly, allowing a lead group of Rob Jebb, Ian Holmes and Tom Owens to disappear into the mist ahead before we arrived at checkpoint one. On the way up to checkpoint two, a group of about ten runners converged from different directions, including the group that had been leading (having gone slightly wrong somewhere and lost their lead), and we ran on together through the clag. On the steep descent from checkpoint three, there was some confusion in the group about the correct route. I spotted the line that Hil and I had taken four days before, and made a beeline for that, as far as I was aware, everyone from the group was following me.

Halfway up the ascent of Beinn a Chaolais (first pap), running (well, walking mostly, most of this climb is about 40 degrees!) with Tom Owens we realised that Jebb and Holmes were no longer with us. We assumed they knew a better route and expected to arrive at the summit and be told they’d gone through before us.

Not so, at the summit we were informed we were first through, they must have gone wrong somewhere! What a feeling, to be leading such a prestigious fell race and I hadn’t even started trying to race yet! This knowledge spurred me onwards and I descended hard to the col before the ascent of Beinn an Oir, dropping everyone except Tom. We worked hard together on the climbs, painfully aware that we were being hunted down by two of the best fell runners of the last twenty years. I also knew that Tom didn’t know where he was going, so kept trying to drop him at every opportunity, always without success. Until the summit of Beinn Shiantaidh (the final pap) I’d got the route spot on, or at least exactly as I had planned on the walk-through with Hil. I was uncertain about the descent from here; I knew we’d got it wrong on our walk, and thought I’d spotted a better line through binoculars, but finding it in 10m of visibility proved too difficult and we emerged from the clag looking at the wrong lochs – too low, and too far south. We ran hard, contouring the mountain as high as the scree would allow us, before regaining 70m up to the col that we should have been at. When we arrived there it was to the sight of two Bingley vests – we had been caught and passed. Tom sprung into action and chased down Rob, who was leading. I passed Ian but couldn’t stick with Tom and Rob on the final climb.

The final descent to the road had seemed super simple when we walked it, but not so in the mist, and Ian got past me again with a better route (his legendary descending skills no doubt helped as well) before the road. I didn’t fare as badly as Tom though, who took such a bad route he went from leading with Rob to seventh when he joined the road.

The less said about the road the better – it was flat, long, my shoes were full of bog and my legs were empty but at least the view was nice and I had Hilary on her bike to encourage me. I managed to hold my position and finish 3rd in a time of 3hrs 35, seven minutes behind Rob and a minute and a half behind Ian. Not bad for a debut in such bad conditions. I’ll be back next year…

Next race is Ennerdale this saturday, another long, rough, classic and this year an English championship race. I did this one last year and would have liked a chance to recce it some more since most of last year’s race was in the cloud, unfortunately I’ve been too busy for that, so I’ll have to run a more tactical race.

Link to gallery here.

Tying up loose ends (Running)

Monday 19 April 2010 02:59PM

Over the past two years I’ve completed an MSc course at the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth, mid-Wales. The surrounding area holds some lovely coast and mountains, but each module was so intense that I never managed more than a few runs around the nearby forests. That was until the eighth and final module, when I had a car with me and decided to run up nearby Cader Idris, one afternoon. This was a magical step away from the intensity of the course and a chance for my brain to re-conjeal from the mush it had become; it took me about seventy minutes, up and down, from Minffordd.

Always in search of challenges, and always more attracted to ones that fit neatly into packages (if I were a very good track runner, I’d much rather run a 4-minute mile than a 3.45 1500m…), my mind ticked over in the pub and by closing time I’d decided to go back the following day and try and do the same thing in under an hour.

Despite a mild hangover I felt I was running really well, climbing hard and aggressively, and descending nimbly, gingerly treading the line between too-fast and too-careful. I got back to the car in 1hr and 40 seconds. It seemed such a shame to finish the course without a nice neat time to remember for the nearby mountain.

So when I was invited back as a guest lecturer on last week’s MSc module I jumped at the chance, and packed my fell shoes. This time I had no car so had to hitch-hike to Minffordd. I didn’t feel nearly as good while running, really struggling on the way up, but I plugged away, figuring that at worst it would be a good training run for up-coming championship races. At the summit I was suprised to find myself two minutes ahead of last time, which goes to show your perception is not always a good guide to your performance. Although two minutes is a big difference, I knew it wasn’t a done deal since last time I had been descending so well, and because I’ve only been back running for a short while so don’t have the descending strength in my legs again yet.

I tried to stay on my toes, flow down the steep gullies and scree, and over the boulders past the lake, all the time not daring to look at my watch. This sort of descent is my favourite – so technical that for most of the way you can’t go that fast, so when it eases off you can really sprint. The final section of steep steps through the forest brought me at last to the 200m of flat track. I gave it all I had and arrived back at the kissing gate just under the hour in 59 minutes and 21 seconds. Result!

Now I’m just wondering how much faster I could have gone if I hadn’t had 4 pints the night before…

Turning into a runner again, but keeping options open (Running)

Thursday 01 April 2010 10:48AM

Circumstances (Patagonia expedition, finishing a thesis, being ill, being in the alps skiing for 5 weeks) have meant that I have hardly run since September last year. With the coming season of fell running being my main focus for the summer, changing that was high on the list of priorities after the Pierramenta. Unfortunately, I got ill again (I raced the last day of the Pierramenta with a heavy cold, which always finishes me off for a week or two), so took two weeks off. I started training again with a run round my old haunt of Arthur’s seat when I was up in Edinburgh for a lecture. I’m being super careful to take things easy, since I often seem to get ill when I start training again after a lay off, so all four of the runs since then have been super slow. It’s interesting, because I must be quite fit after 5 weeks of ski racing, but even jogging feels alien and leaves my legs very sore. What is exciting though is how quickly it gets easier. Yesterday, my fourth day running since I re-started, I actually began to feel like a runner again, progress!

I had intended to have another crack at the Ramsay round on skis after the Pierramenta, but as usual a big thaw came in just as my train sped back into the UK, so I wrote it off for another season. Now it seems that winter may have made a return to the highlands, so perhaps it’s back on, time to clear the decks on the work front, keep the diary open and an ear to the ground…

Pierramenta 2010 - good things come to those who wait (Running)

Tuesday 16 March 2010 08:44AM

Up until last week’s Pierramenta, of the 7 ski mountaineering races I’d done, only one had been on the full course. All the others had been shortened due to weather and avalanche danger. It became a bit of a joke between my race partner, Ben, and me, that they never run “parcours A” when we turn up.

The Pierramenta more than made up for that. Four days of stunning weather, amazing courses and fantastic racing. The courses were more technical than anything I’d raced over before, with very steep, serious descents, long exposed ridges and sections of scrambling with your skis waving around and getting in the way on your back.

Our performance in each stage seemed directly related to how much steep descending there was, with our worst stage being the first day (lots of steep, icy and exposed descents, a total of 2700m ascent and descent in 17km) in which we were over 50% slower than the winners, and our best being the second day, which had the same amount of height gain but in double the distance, so no gnarly descents for us to lose big chunks of time on, and we managed just over 30% slower than the winners.

Overall, after nearly 10,000m of ascent spread over 4 stages, we were 63rd out of 151 finishing male teams, bang on 14 hours, almost 4 hours behind winners Kilian Jornet and Florent Troillet. Not bad for a first time, but pretty psyched to go back and improve for next year!

Now, while keeping options open for another crack at the Ramsay round on skis, it’s time to re-adjust to normal life again after 5 weeks in never-never land (the Alps).

A guy who finished 100th made a series of short films from the first three days that give a good feel of the race. day 1 , day 2 and day 3.