Kinder Trial Race Report

The only picture of me

The long and short of it is, good race, snowy, did some really good navving, and then screwed it up by not following the cardinal rule of nav events. Don't follow someone else.

It was snowing quite a lot last night, big floaty flakes, and the hills were whiting over quite nicely. There was a minor concern that we wouldn't get to the race, but had it been that bad, we could have just run over to Hayfield anyway.

The girls are off

As it was, the day dawned beautifully clear, and the roads were fine, soon enough we were at Hayfield scout hut getting out dibber tags, and engaging in general pre-race banter. Although it was cold, I knew I was going to warm up soon enough as we left, so opted to wear a thermal, arm warmers, gloves and shorts, unfortunately it just wasn't bad enough weather to break out the new spektr smock. Ah well, its time will surely come!

This being Lynne's second race, and first one of the year, she wangled her way to getting a couple of partners from the club and went around as a gaggle of glossopdalers, which was nice, they went off early, and went the other way around from me, so I saw them once, about halfway around the course.
I decided that I'd take a camera round, as it was such a gorgeous day, it would be a shame to let it go to waste. Because of this decision I figured that I wasn't exactly going to be competitive in my time, but at least I could make up for it with a decent bit of navigation.

Ian on the way up to Mount Famine

Time for the off, and after looking at the map and pondering it for a while, I decided that I was going to to head around anti-clockwise. The route up Mount Famine, Dimpus Clough is bad enough when you've done a short race, at the end of a long race, in the snow, would be a killer. I caught up with a Pennine runner, and we tag teamed up to the first check point, and then up to the top of Mount Famine. A quick discussion about whether to contour round to hit the next before going into the clough was had, and I had pretty much already decided that a down and up approach was the best.

Down the hill, half running, half sliding, we faffed for a fair while looking for the right clough, but staying relatively high. There were a load of runners who were doing the same thing, but had been sucked down into the bottom of the clough. After a bit of investigation, we headed up the hill, he went to look at another clough, and I continued up the same one, and got the flag. Whistling at him, I carried on. The next part was a slog uphill, and then, a delightful bash across some fields, staying well ahead of the runners that I had unintentionally guided into that previous checkpoint. I took a stonkingly good line, hit the check point, and then following a single line of footprints, instead of the majority which had gone off in what I thought wasn't the best direction, I came up around the corner of Swines Back and dropped into the clough with the next Check point. Fantastic.

Just then, a load of runners came storming down the hill, so I stopped for a moment to take a few pictures,  and carried on. This was obviously the area where I was going to be passing people in the opposite direction, Chris went past, then Charlie, then John Hewitt (who shouted at me for taking photos when I should have been getting on with the more serious task of running), Dave Hogg, Sikobe, Lynne, Alison, Beccy, Carl and Beryl. I had also caught up with Sue who was going in the same direction as me.

Chris

SBRT with Sue descending behind him

SBRT was also there, and we took a moment for a bit of mutual photo taking.
Down into the next clough and clipped the checkpoint, stopped to take a picture of Ian of DarkPeak. It was at this point that Julien caught me up and overtook. Ah well, I'm not going all out today, and anyway, its a delightful day to be out in the hills.

Carl and Beryl

Carrying onto the next checkpoint, a racer was stopping to have some jelly babies and very generously offered one to me, which was very nice (thankyou Mr Springfield Strider!) and on through some pretty gnarly terrain around Cluther rocks down to hit the next checkpoint.

Julien

IDP

Clip and away, and down, and whats this? Julien coming back up towards me?! He had missed the checkpoint by a distance and was doubling back. Ah well, he had started 20 mins after me and was 20 mins up on me anyway. Not a problem. So then on up towards Sandy Heys with this horrible climb that seemed to go on for quite a while. I consoled myself that it wasn't going up Mount Famine. To the top, clip, and Julien comes past again, I'm not entirely sure how to get to the next one, so I tag along behind him.
At this point I was well aware that I was breaking the 1st absolute rule of not following someone else on a nav event, however, it was a nice day, he knows this hill like the back of his hand, and, yes, he went pretty much straight to the point.

Fantastic, now to the next one, he set off down the hill like a rocket, and I was in close pursuit, deciding to take pictures of him descending. So caught up in the brilliant fun of running downhill fast with a friend, taking photos, and just enjoying the day out I didn't look at the map.
We got to the bottom, and surged up the other side of the valley, following Jude, who we had just caught up with. At the top of the valley, Julien turned around. We've missed a checkpoint.
D'oh. That'll teach me to follow anyone blindly every again. I was running faster than I could map read, and I wasn't concentrating. Now we were 3km from home with a 2km round trip to get a Checkpoint that we missed.

The fateful photos!

All the time that I had built up with good choices and intelligent navigation blown away by following another person. Ah well. Entirely my fault, caught up in the moment.
So back to the Checkpoint watching others that I had passed, pass me, damn.

Then the run back down the hill, and up to White cabin, I was getting tired and the line just didn't appear under my feet for ages. It felt like it took a long long time to get up there, and as the cabin came into sight, Julien was shooting off into the distance, with 4 runners that I should have been in front of.
Clip the paper, and off down the hill. I was a little unsure of the path as I'd never been along it before, but it was a wide scar through snow covered fields. I no longer cared about the puddles with ice in them, splashing though them with complete disregard for the water in my shoes.
Down, down down into Hayfield, overtaking 2 or 3 people on the way back in.
I finished in 2:43 ish, no idea, but probably well down the pecking order.
I'd be disappointed, but, I had such a cracking day out, it really doesn't matter!

Glossopdale also won a fair amount of prizes as well, despite his various detours, Julien won V50, Susan, Jude and Beryl all won their respective age catagories as well.

Well done Lynne!

Lynne came in and had quite amazing leg cramps, which surprised her quite a lot. At least she now knows what they feel like!
Now at home, sipping a Rescue Ale, courtesy of IDP and Woodhead mountain rescue, writing my blog so that Beryl doesn't get disappointed when she see me down the pub later on today!
Taking the camera around was a vrilliant success, and I might end up taking around an SLR if I can work out how to carry it without breaking it.

As a bit of amusement, here is my track in garmin, have a butchers and see where you thing we may have gone slightly wrong

I have only one slight disappointment about the day. Nick Barber didn't wear his flat cap for the duration of the race. Next time maybe?

A terribly cheesy photo of baba

A race post mortem

Eccles Pike on Wednesday, (report here) was the first race I have done where I really wasn't happy with the result.
Any number of excuses can be made, it was too hot, the route was too short, there wasn't enough up hill, downhill, or enough off road, there was too much tarmac, the field was particularly strong, I wasn't feeling up to it, I was wearing the wrong underpants, it was on the wrong date of the month, I wasn't wearing the right number, the list can (and does, for some runners) go on and on.

In the end I was running and racing in for somewhere around 20th place, and ended up being 26th. Its not quite the same ring as racing for 1st and ending up 6th, and should I be entirely bothered about getting 26th as its not really any better than 20th in the grand scheme of things?
Well, yes, I think so. It doesn't matter where you are in the pack, be it at the front or at the back. Running with emotional content is a whole different ball game to just going through the motions and finishing without really trying. That all out effort which gets you in at a certain time, thats the key. Its not really you against other people in the race. Yes, they may be there to spur you on, to get you in faster, to give you something to race against, but at the end of the day, its you against the clock.

Is it just silly though? To run with such emotional content that you end up chewing it over in your mind for days after. Its not that you want to, but there are so many things that go right and wrong in a short space of time that your brain just keeps thinking about it. Would it not be better just to run for the love of it? The feeling of the dirt beneath your feet, the wind in the hair and midges in the teeth (kidding).
Yes. But again, I would say to a point.
Running for the love of it is great, and it takes great willpower to keep going and get better at it without plateauing. Even if you do plateau, there is the delight in running in different places, doing different things that keeps the enjoyment value of it high. If I was told that I could never race again, but could quite happily go off into the hills just to run, I would be quite happy doing just that.

Racing just has that little edge. The chance to shine or the chance to burn out in a bright ball of flame as you get overtaken in the last 400 metres. You push yourself just that little bit harder in a race than you do on your own, and in my case, there is ALWAYS someone to chase, ALWAYS someone to measure yourself against.

But what went wrong? Why did I lose those places in the last little bit? It wasn't a long race, and I certainly can't look at race nutrition as a factor.
My HR was crazy right through the race, and it got up to 99% of max at one point. Thats quite a lot. Looking at it though, my max is about 183-4. I wonder if I'm just not trying hard enough and there are another few beats in there that I can squeeze out. Or maybe I just don't have that high a max HR.
My flat out speed on the flat and on tarmac isn't as good as other runners. That is certainly something that needs to be worked on. I'd love to ignore that part of the training as running on flat, hard surfaces really doesn't interest me that much. Maybe that is the reason for being slower, it just doesn't register with me emotionally. But to get better, thats something that needs to be improved.

My descending, normally quite a strength, certainly wasn't one on this race. My co-ordination was off and my legs were jelly like as I descended. This was through massive overloading on the uphill phase of the run. I didn't hang back, I just stuck in like a trooper. All the waste products and acid and nasty stuff was churning around the system and my legs had no time to recover at all before plunging downhill. I think a series of uphill overloads followed by downhill plunges on good terrain are what might help out here. The uphills seem to be getting better, but at the detriment to any kind of downhill acceleration or maintenence of speed.
That needs to be fixed.
I think in the past I saved myself a little on the climbs, or at least there was 100 metres of flat or slight downhill for me to recover before a downhill plunge, but not this time. It was straight down.
By the end I was wasted. I don't think I've ever run any distance at that kind of HR or effort, especially right from the off. A bit of practice with sprint starts and then trying to relax back into a decent pace might be an idea.
I wonder if road biking will increase my pain tolerance, or ability to keep going at the end of a final run? That is something that needs to be looked at, but not obsessed over, I'm more of a runner than a cyclist at the moment.

The thing is, although I'm a bit disappointed with the result, I can look back on it now, and see things that need to be improved. Weaknesses that can be worked on. Continually being satisfied with your performance is a chance for complacency to sneak in, to not want to get better, or to believe that there isn't really any way in which you can become better.
I'm at the bottom of the curve right now, and this is the foundation of a better and faster racing me. I just need to remember to keep it real, and occasionally, like at Eccles Pike, step outside of the comfort zone, see just how far I can push myself in order to work out what needs to be changed, what needs to be looked at, and how I can improve.

Kinder Trog

For the race report, its on my other blog.

http://globaltherapies.blogspot.com/2011/06/kinder-trog.html
cheers.

iROC

So, Its been a while.
Looking for a job is more of a full time job than actually having a job... how bizarre.
Still nothing on that front, however a couple of races have been run, and not much in the way of training has been done, mainly as the racing has been the training.

First up was the iROC, up in Durham Dales on an old disused cement factory. The race had been in preparation for quite some time- specifically as there were a lot of permissions that needed to be put in place, and also this was the inaugaral event- so there was much to go wrong.
The format was 6 races over 2 days.
Well, 5 on the Saturday and a killer on the Sunday, but more of that later.

What made this interesting was the nature of the event. After each race we got to go back to the tent, chill out, talk about the next race in the series, chat with other competitors, and generally prepare for the next one.
Of course, not all competitors were racing in all the events, so there were some people who were more knackered than others...

Like idiots, Jibber and I entered all of them.

Race 1. Fell race.
Basically up the steep sides of the hill overlooking the cement factory, up. Up more, over, into and across a bog, up some more, and then down, etc. For a good 8-9 miles. It basically gave us a good overview of the entire event area and more, what terrain to expect, where to expect it and how it was generally going to look.
The final part of the run was down through the single track in the forest- it was obscenely technical. Lumps, Bumps, roots, bridges, steep drops, the works.
That served as one of the big "anticipators" of the whole thing.
It turned out that a lot of the racers spent the rest of the day in dread of the night bike race which was going to go through that single track.
I spent much of that race waiting for Jibber- I appear to be a faster runner than him- and could have gained a number of placings, however, I waited and we plunged through the ice-cold river at the end of the race, and ended in good style.

Race 2. Orienteering part 1
For this race each racer was given a sealed map as they entered the start area, each map had a numbered series of orienteering points, and you had to collect the points in the correct order.
There were 4 loops, and every racer had the loops in a unique order. The loops at the bottom were the shorter of the 4, the other 2 were much longer and required a lot of hill climbing skills.
I had a bottm loop first, then a hill loop, then the killer bitch of a loop and then the final one closest to the finish.
Going up the third one, I was astonished to see someone actually RUNNING up the hill/slag heap behind me. "that bloke is fast" I thought.
Yep, then I got caned by a girl. Props to her though- totally wupped me.
Got back in 1hr31min.

Race 3 Orienteering 2
This was meant to go over into darkness, but it didnt really get all that dark. It was true orienteering in that we had an hour to get as much done as we could.
I teamed up with Jibber for this one and we got as many as we could. I managed one more point than him with a final sprint along the bottom of the course. Quite a nice trot over the hills, but I was really beginning to feel it.

Race 4 Night MTB
This was the one that the Bikers were looking forward to, and the runners really werent.
I was very happy that I had my Maxx exposure Joystick head torch thingy- just the right amount of light. (more would, of course, have been useful, but light=lots of cash.
The start was a bit of a mangled affair with people not knowing when or who was going, but I managed to get away with 3 others (we were let out in batches of 4).
The outward trail was getting torn up by this time, and wasnt fun at all- (I was VERY VERY glad that I had spent 30quid on a new rear tyre a couple of hours before) and I started winding my way through people on the first climb up the road.
We then went onto the grass, still up hill, then more winding up to the top of a massive slag heap, and a massive scary downhill bit, which was most amusing.
So I had overtaken a number of people, and then it was down into the depths of the forst and singletrack- which was, without a doubt, absolutely fantastic.
There were a couple of uber steep bits that had to be walked, but other than that, it was really good.
Coming down the final road, I pushed on the power and really drove it home, overtaking another load of people before the end.
I came about 41st out of the whole lot, which, all things considered, was not bad at all.

Race 5 Night Fell race
Ok, was getting tired here, it was a 4-5mile slog up and down the hills, we had covered pretty much all of the ground during the day, but it didnt make it any easier.
ACLs and ITBs were in massive pain going down hills, had to go through that damn forest again, which was even more churned up than ever. I got back in 1hr 8mins, Jibber took considerably longer.
going through that damn river at the end really didnt help either.
Settled down to sleep once the music in the marquee had shut the hell up- at 1am, and woke up, somewhat concernedly at 915 the next morning, when we had only really had about what felt like 10 mins kip.

Race 6- MTB enduro
Never done an enduro before. Never want to do one in those conditions ever again. Knackered to the point of oblivion we set out- with a 500yard dash to the bikes, en masse, and then got on out bikes... now, I consider myself to be quite a hardy biker, but, by the end of the first loop, I was gasping, and by the end of the second, I was a gonner. I couldnt stand up on my pedals to go over rough ground as my knees hurt too much, I couldnt pedal up hill- I was in granny ring the FIRST time around, there wasnt anywhere else to go after that!
so after only 1.5hours and 2 loops out, I called it a day and limped in. Knees are more important than a few places on the chart.

I came 60th out of about 200 (I was 50th before the enduro... but there you go), and was totally knackered, with a massive cut down the back of my left leg from the DMR pedals.

couldnt have finished the race without High 5 4:1, nor power gels, nor geobars.
best endurance food ever.

Box Hill Fell Race

Damn me.
Im knackered.

Got down there by train... there is a direct train from New Cross Gate to Dorking! Can you believe that? Honestly had no idea, so we got the train to London Bridge and then went past NCG and felt like right idiots.

Got to the place, no issues, was a beautiful and sunny day, a bt squidgy under foot, but nothing too bad. There were a lot of tri runners and a lot of club runners around, all looking dauntingly good.

We figured that Id end up red-misting at the beginning and running like an idiot and Jibber would think it was longer than it was and end up not going all out. Turns out we were right on both scores.
Unfortunately My forerunner, as noted below is being repaired, so I have no geeky stats to talk about.
However,
First hill, there were LOADS of people walking. Literally, straight from the (mass) start. was almost like a brawl. up a hill, along a path and then a straight down.
Was overtaken by a suicidally fast woman at this point. No regard for life or limb. Or just total trust in her shoes. Probably both.
I was relatively fast on the first 3 uphills, but was really feeling it after that.
Something I noticed was how much faster everyone else was on the flat. Like wierdly faster.
I settled into more of an 8hour DAR pace, and everyone else thrashed past me. I guess if id have followed them I'd have blown up really quite quickly.

There was a fair amount of pain going around, but not in my knee, which is good. No issues on that front in the slightest- just general cardiovascular pain.
By the end I could tell my running style- especially my footfall was suffering- could hear it slapping away instead of being nice and stealth- but running downhill, I was just trying to get as many studs in contact with the ground as possible.
Running down stairs was interesting- though I managed to over take people on that front.
There was one really long uphill section... second to last hill I guess, where I had to pace myself between points. Walk to the tree. Run to the next one. walk to that molehill... that kind of thing.

Final sprint down the hill to the end was good. Though I did have a fleeting thought that it would be best if I didnt fall and break/twist/destroy something. Gave it a lot on that last downhill and nearly couldnt stop. Collapsed on the ground at the end and it felt like the sky was floating away.
Was ok after a few mins of lying on the ground and gasping like a fish though.
Not sure about the timing yet- I think it was somewhere around 75mins.
Walked back. Had a meal at a pub and a beer. Came home.
Collapsed. Seriously.
I cant believe how damn tired I am. Must have flaked out for a good 2 hours, and am vaguely thinking I might go back to bed.
Jibber is totally dead to the world.
Oh... and an interesting point. We were both dehydrated throughout the race. I guess its because we are used to carrying water and food around with us and dont have the need to stock up beforehand. I was gasping by the second hill. So thats a point worth remembering in the future for a fell race.