It snowed last night, and the Spine Challenger starts today. I am not doing it this year, looking back at my blog from the race last year, I can still remember the pain. During the race it crossed my mind what kind of a running year I might then have, whether it would be good, bad or indifferent.
To begin with it was pretty rubbish. I couldn't really string days, let alone weeks of training together. A few races came and went - Teenager with Altitude, helping Jasmin out on her Bob Graham, that kind of thing, but various tweaks and problems came and went.
Through the year I had pre-entered a number of races, but they ended up being a bit rubbish, or I had to pull out and DNS them. My ankle twisted and kept going over through the summer months, and it seemed like I just couldn't keep myself together.
August saw Craken Edge where I ended up pulling a hip flexor which put me out of fast running action for a fair while, and to be honest, I'm still feeling it. I rested for a good few weeks - to no avail, so I trained a little- to no avail, and through into December I just decided to train properly for a few weeks just to see what would happen. Nothing nasty, so I've just decided to ignore it and continue.
To be fair, although that sounds like a litany of bad luck and grumbly-ness, I have had a decent amount of good form. The Spine Challenger was hard, but I was 4th overall, and 1st Mountain Rescue home. I managed another sub-4 at Jura, and in very different conditions to the Spine, I came in 3rd on the Bryce Canyon 50miler... very different extremes of weather and temperature. Not a bad to-do.
This year should be fun- as there is no horrendous winter race to contend with. However, I have just had confirmation that I have a place in the TDS in France at the end of August. 73km and 7000m of ascent. So thats probably going to be the main aim of the year, with other bits and pieces jammed in around that.
The main thing is going to be trying to stay injury free and enjoying being out there.
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| That's what its about. Being in the hills with friends. |