in the right direction

Unlike that time with Sparky when I went the wrong way off Gt Gable, training wise, things are now going in the right direction.

For the last 2 weeks I have stuck to my plans and completed;

1hr roadrun on a Tuesday,
Blencathra ascent on a Wednesday,
track session of mile reps on a Thursday.

I know this isnt a particularly high volume of training, but its about as much as I can manage at the mo', both in terms of time management and tiredness.

Clearly, a coach or personal trainer would spread out those 3 runs over the 5 weekdays rather than lump them together consecutively like I do, but, I love my Fridays off and at present, with my weekends usually being long tough hill running, I am still pretty knackered on a Monday. Perhaps once the days lengthen I will do an hours offroad jogging with Scamp on a Monday.

Sparky knows less about map reading than me - here, Cazzy is confused by an upside down map

Saturdays I try to do a short(ish) fellrun of no more than 2.5 hours and include a big ascent like Skiddaw or Blen' within that. Then Sundays I'm aiming for a much longer fell outing of at least 4 hours, including plenty of ascent.

The weekend just gone was a little different in that I ran the Northern Cross Country Champs on Saturday. The course was mildly undulating and covered in about 3-5 inches of snow. My race was the last one of the day and by then the course was an absolute quagmire. Every footfall saw you sink above ankle depth in either snow, slush, water or mud. It was a long way too - 12k I think, and took me over 51 minutes. I was 173rd from 583 finishers.  A year ago I was 206th from 687 finishers. Pluckys Mrs is a maths teacher but I didnt ask for her help in calculating that I was  29.9% through the  finishers last year, and 29.6% this time. Consistent.



arm across body - sorry Phil

Everyone who ran agreed the conditions were brutal. I didn't realise how hard my legs must have worked until the next day when I was out in the fells. I was absolutely spent within an hour and despite not hitting a single summit and being finished inside 3 hours I was wrecked and had very sore legs until Monday. It's all good training of course, and hopefully will payoff in the summer.

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