March kicked off with the Stan Bradshaw Pendle Round, a super fell race starting and ending in the village of Barley... I felt just about ready for the race after a very disappointing February but post race, that blasted illness returned with a vengeance. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have raced (and perhaps that's what prolonged the illness into March) but frustration had gotten the better of me... and not for the last time in March.
I noticed this morning that it would have been the second running of the Lower Borrowdale Skyline fell race had it not been cancelled due to insufficient pre-entries and volunteers... it was a fantastic race last year and I swore at the time I would return to run it again. Ross has posted on Facebook that he hopes to reschedule it for the autumn so fingers crossed! And so to reminisce, I dug out my short write up from last year...
The Stan Bradshaw Pendle Round is a nine-point-something mile fell race starting and finishing in Barley, a small village to the East of Pendle Hill.
I'll continue with the gut training throughout February and with any luck I'll get a
This time last year, I hadn't been a member of Bowland Fell Runners for very long and I was eager to get involved in all aspects of the club: I spotted a call for volunteers to help out at the Bleasdale Circle Fell Race (a club race) and so I put my name down. It was my first experience of volunteering at a fell race and I thoroughly enjoyed helping out in the kitchen and meeting other members of the club at the same time...
Time flies when you’re having fun… or so they say... and January has flown by despite it not all being fun!
I’ve managed two good weeks of training but took a five day break due to a mild chesty thing and a second five day break due to life and work busyness.
I experience nausea during every ultra marathon I run. It typically kicks in around mile thirty-five and remains with me well after the race has finished, sometimes for up to twelve hours afterwards.
Nausea is surprisingly common among ultra runners. In fact, Rod Bien writes in Training for the Uphill Athlete that he has thrown up in every single one of his eighteen 100 mile races, sometimes as many as ten or twenty times per race... apparently he has become so used to it that he can throw up without breaking stride!
I often reflect on the question, what would it take to get really good at this?
And no, it's not just because it's that time of year when we're conditioned to retrospection and resolution making, I really do think about it a lot… but I consistently fail to turn thinking into actionable steps.
And by this, I of course mean running... and for me, that's the long stuff in the mountains... that's where my heart is!
Plan-B is not something you want to hear on the eve of your A race (and only ultra of 2022): the text message read...
NAV4 TdH Emergency info: Sorry, it's Plan-B. Route will go to CP3 and then return the same way...
I must admit, my heart sank.
The Tour de Helvellyn is a 38 mile ultra marathon that starts and finishes in Askham, a small village to the South of Penrith in Cumbria. There's no set route for the race, just eight checkpoints you need to navigate between, two of which you pass through twice on the eleven mile out-and-back section to Patterdale... which is where the sixteen mile loop section around the base of Helvellyn begins and ends. It's two weeks out from race day, and I've got a day-pass for a recce!