A 24-hour Race

The reason for my three laps of Carsington Water in early June was because there was a chance I was going to get a place in a 24-hour race 3 weeks later and, given my lack of training this year, I thought it would be wise to go out and see how a 6-hour effort felt.

I’m sure that there’s no coach in the world who would say a 24-hour race was a good idea in my state of fitness (after surgery late last year I had an enforced lay-off, followed by a very conservative return to running), but I also had no intention of treating this 24-hour race as a 24-hour race. My intention was to do two 6-hour stints, with 12 hours off overnight, hoping to cover a marathon in each stint.

The Saturday after the Carsington outing, a message came through that I had a place and thus with one training run under my belt, I started my taper (in case you can’t see from where you’re sitting, my tongue is in my cheek).

Travelling to the venue on the morning of the race, it was pleasing that Erica was given a pitch within paces of the start/finish line – the perfect position. I duly registered, got my number, and an hour and a half later (after a spot of early lunch and no small amount of faffing) I stepped out to join everyone else behind the start gantry.

At noon, off we went.

The most notable feature of the afternoon was the weather. Objectively, 21 degrees is not a hot day. The problem, as is so often the case in the UK, is that there had been no chance to acclimatize to warm weather, having seemingly been stuck in early spring for months. There had been some hot weather in the UK in May, but not on the east coast of Scotland, which is where we were at the time, where it was struggling to reach the mid-teens. As a result, 21 degrees felt awfully warm.

I finished my 4^th lap at 1812, and contemplated going out after tea for one more lap on the basis that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. However: a) I had a plan, so why not stick to it? and b) my left quad was feeling strained and I felt like I had a small blister on my left little toe, both of which would benefit from sticking to the plan. So, having had an ice cream the moment I stepped off the course, I set about demolishing not just one bowl of pasta but two huge bowls. Thanks to the hot weather, I didn’t feel any need to heat them up; they were just fine straight out of the coolbox.

Pudding before tea

My original plan had been to set out at 6am on Day 2, to give me the intended 6-hour window before the event finished at noon. However, my secondary objective was to cover two marathons, and by the end of Day 1 I’d realized that I’d likely be rather slow on Day 2, thus I brought my intended start time back to 5am.

As it went, I didn’t do much sleeping overnight, and with the forecast being for clear skies and even warmer temperatures, at 0300 I thought I may as well get out in time for sunrise and to take advantage of the cool morning. Waking Mick just enough to get him to put an eye-mask on and move across the bed, I then tried to disturb him as little as possible as I had breakfast and a cup of tea (had we been in Bertie, it would have been easy not to disturb him, but we were in Erica where space is limited, particularly when there’s running gear strewn everywhere too). At 4am, out I went.

Sunrise approaching

I was sluggish on that first lap of the day, such that four laps was hard to contemplate and I was slightly regretting not doing that fifth lap last night (whilst also knowing that could have tipped the strained quad over the edge; it was much more gruntled after a night of rest).

The turn-around in my energy level came about 3km before the end of the lap, when I came upon a chap who was jogging along slowly but steadily. Using my usual opener of asking how he was doing, he confessed that he was struggling, pointing out the evidence: that he was running and I was overtaking him at a walk. I slowed down a bit to continue the conversation, and as we chatted he sped up, then sped up some more until I had to burst into a jog to keep up with him. We ended up jogging the rest of that lap together and I would happily have gone out on the next lap with him, had our timings coincided. He ended up coming first male.

By the end of the second lap of the second day, I had no doubt that I would meet my distance objective, even if I was going to go over my intended 6-hour stint.

At 1048 I crossed the finish line for the final time, having covered an official total of 84.4km, whereupon I confirmed to the timing chap that I wasn’t going out again. The benefit of the earlier finish (other than avoiding the worst of the heat) was that it gave me time for a shower before the massage Mick had arranged for me for 1145.

We didn’t stick around for the prize presentations, but only because we’d become aware on our outward drive of a scheduled closure of the motorway, and it seemed prudent to join the traffic queuing for the diversion route sooner rather than later.

It was a good, fun weekend – for me at least. With Mick even less able to walk on his poorly Achilles than he was 3 weeks ago, he was rather confined to Erica and her immediate environs. He did an admirable job of supporting my efforts though, particularly with timing the making of cups of tea so that they were cold by the time I arrived at the end of each lap (exactly as I wanted).

My lap stats:

Lap (10.5km)	Lap Time	Time in camp after lap	Rank
1	01:19:31	3:09	77th
2	01:21:39	15:33	27th
3	01:24:09	19:30	9th
4	01:25:42	9:53:53	9th
5	01:25:48	16:33	14th
6	01:26:10	20:57	10th
7	01:31:55	17:22	9th
8	01:26:40	1:12:00 (to end of event)	7th

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 4th to Thursday 7th June – Hognaston

Where's Bertie? He spending three nights at a Camping & Caravanning Club Temporary Holiday Site (a field with a tap and a waste disposal point) in Hognaston, next to Carsington Water in Derbyshire, at a cost of £11 per night.

Weather: Tuesday: rain and an increasingly gusty wind; Wednesday: A couple of showers and some sunny intervals, breezy with a high of just 12 degrees; Thursday: Sunny intervals and a high of 16 degrees.

Mick was taken by surprise when I suggested on Monday night that we should go away for a few days the following day. I thought we might be held at home awaiting some deliveries, but they’d both arrived on Monday, giving us the opportunity for a short escape. This in turn would give me somewhere advantageous for a long run on Wednesday, as it turns out that even though it’s June, mud-season at home still hasn’t abated and is at levels expected in February and early March.

We might have gone to the campsite on Cannock Chase where we stayed for a couple of nights last year, except that it was barely worth £15 (a combination of lack of facilities and lack of privacy/security) and was now asking £20. When I saw that there was a Temporary Holiday Site currently in action in this field at such a reasonable price, our destination was decided. The only downside of Carsington Water over Cannock Chase is the lack of route options, but that didn’t trouble me for my objectives this week.

So, after doing a bit of work on Tuesday morning, I threw myself into packing Bertie (who no doubt felt like he’d only been unpacked moments earlier) and by early afternoon we were ready for the off.

Not long after 3pm we were parked up on site, and would even have had a view of the water had we parked facing in that direction. We don’t tend to think about the best view when we choose how to park; maybe we should.

With rain coming down and Bertie being rocked by the wind, the rest of the afternoon was spent indoors, although by evening the sky had cleared and things were looking good for fine weather on the morrow.

Taken on Wednesday when the weather was better. 

Wednesday

The route around Carsington Water is around 13km long, or 14km if you take the Dam Trail. Starting at just gone 8am, I did one 13km loop (barely met anyone), followed by two 14km ones (met loads of people on #2; it’d calmed down again by #3), doing the out-and-back up the hill to Bertie after each one to top up my drink and snack supply (and, after the second lap, to slam-dunk a package of sushi and a mug of tea).

Bearing in mind that after last year’s surgery, I only started tentatively running again at Christmas, and didn’t continuously run 5km until mid-February, I haven’t done anywhere near as much mileage as I had by the end of May in recent years (2022: 1500km; 2023: 1100km; 2024: 450km). That may make yesterday’s activity look ill-advised, but there was reason behind my madness, and as it went, I felt good for the first 2.5 laps. By the final few miles a few bits of my body were protesting, most notably the little toe on my left foot. It’s not had the chance to toughen up this year, so blistered early, after around 35k.

Not wanting to risk losing my little toe nail (again!) just now is what stopped me from going out for another half an hour, although once I’d tended the blister, eaten a cheese toastie and downed a pot of tea, Mick did come out with me to cover 1.1km, just to make the distance up to a full marathon. A lumpy one too. I’ve run around Carsington Water a few times before, yet still I was surprised at how undulating the route is.

Mick was a little jealous of my activities, particularly as he was due for an 8-hour outing this week, but he hurt his Achiles last weekend.

Thursday

On arrival we’d paid for a two-night stay, but as I headed out for another short circuit this morning (not of the reservoir, but of the Dam plus the Dam Trail), Mick went and paid for another night.

I was soon back from my run (oh, my body loved me for that!) and in good time for our next activity: a walk to the local pub for lunch.

I felt cheated! Surely by definition a sandwich involves two slices of bread?! The woman on the next table ordered a different sandwich and had two absolute door wedges containing her filling.

A better route was chosen to get back, avoiding a stretch of the busy-ish B-road.

We made time for a crossword before returning to the laptops for more TGO Challenge tasks. Hopefully the 2024 Event will be wrapped up by the end of June, allowing a complete rest in July, before preparations for 2025 start in August. (Post-blog note: ha! Naive of me to think so!)

Friday

Home. No leisure for frittering the morning away, as I have a lunch date.

Wednesday - Saturday 17-20 April - Home to Killin

Back in mid-January we thought we may still be able to fit in a trip to Spain. Then a tenant gave notice and factoring in the work that would be required as a result, we thought maybe we would get to France for a few weeks come early March. The work on the house expanded to fill the time available and we finally declared it complete on Tuesday afternoon (16 April) - although we did take last week off, spending two nights at the C&CC club site at Crowden (£31 per night; campsites have become awfully expensive, but on this occasion the location suited us), followed by two nights on Ma-in-Law's drive, followed by a night on a campsite almost within spitting distance of the M62 at Heywood (£25 per night - not worth it for the facilities available and the noise of the motorway). Friday night was spent parked in a road near to Martin & Sue's house (phreerunner.blogspot.com) who kindly invited us around for dinner. After running Fletcher Moss parkrun with them on Saturday morning, followed by coffee and cake at the nearby clubhouse, back home we went to tackle a lengthy to-do list in a small amount of time.

By Wednesday morning this week Bertie had been unpacked and repacked and northwards we went. Shap was our objective for the end of the day, via couple of hours in Halifax with Ma-in-Law. The journey sped by for me, as I sat in the back learning how to use a particular bit of software so as to achieve a task related to the TGO Challenge. The evening at Shap passed in the same vein until Mick finally dragged me out of the rabbit hole in which I'd become entrenched, pointing out that it was past my bedtime.

My work-on-the-road efforts continued into Thursday morning, and we were in Scotland before I finally started looking at hill-bagging.co.uk to decide what hill I was going to tackle that afternoon. Strathyre was where we found ourselves, in a community car park where we were happy to oblige the request to pay £5 per day. 

One hill was bagged in the rain on Thursday afternoon, two in mixed conditions on Friday morning. Friday's linear route involved Mick having to drive a few minutes down the road to pick me up. Bertie was probably only missing for half an hour and returned to find the only other vehicle present was now parked where Bertie had been. Fortunately there wasn't a lack of other options - it's a sizeable car park. 

With a pause just long enough for me to strip off my smelly clothes, have a flannel wash and slip into something fresh, straight over to the Broch Cafe we went for lunch. We snagged the last inside table - fortuitous timing as having been so cool on the hills all morning, I wouldn't have fancied sitting outside. 

Lunch.

I didn't find time during the rest of the afternoon to plan a hill for Saturday, so that was my first task on Saturday morning ... except that our mobile phone signal, that had been good enough to stream TV for the last two days, had mysteriously disappeared overnight. That led us to be away before breakfast, for the 10-minute drive up to Lochearnhead. The drive warmed Bertie up (it had gone down to 2 degrees overnight; Bertie's heating, set to 7 degrees, had come on at 3am) and the car park in Lochearnhead had the benefit of not just a good phone signal, allowing hill research, but also some public toilets and bins. 

With hill bagged, a decision needed to be made as to where we were going to spend our final night before reaching Newtonmore tomorrow morning. That decision was made, but with the day being young, I suggested we stopped off at Killin en-route.

Continuing our quality control visits to cafes within the TGO Challenge area. Mick's Victoria Sponge was truly massive. My Boiled Fruit Loaf looked disappointing by comparison, but its flavour made up for its relative lack of size. 

We didn't then leave Killin. Given the choice between going 25 minutes further along the road to pay £7 to stay in a Forestry Commission car park, or staying here for free, staying here seemed the obvious choice. It's Bertie's second visit here, although last time Mick wasn't with me and the weather was jolly wet.

Friday to Sunday 19-21 January – Chatsworth

(There should be photos in this post, but I don't have time to locate and add them just now. Please just imagine what should go with the captions for the time being)

Where was Bertie? He spent two nights at the Caravan & Motorhome Club Site at Chatsworth.

Weather: Cold but nice on Friday, increasingly rainy on Saturday

The Caravan & Motorhome Club’s prices for its club sites used to be very reasonable in winter, usually beating independent sites. In 2021 they were still remarkably affordable, helped in part by the Covid reduction in VAT on hospitality. Then last year they rocketed to the point that we were priced out and it was looking like we weren’t going to get a single stay to offset out membership fee of £58.

As well as the fees increasing beyond affordability, the Club also implemented deposits on bookings advertised as ‘fully refundable’ but in reality only refundable up to 3 weeks before. In our case the deposits weren’t an issue (because we don’t tend to book in advance), but I think both things have hit the number of nights stayed on their sites quite significantly. By the end of the year they were advertising that deposits had been halved to 10%, and every member was given a voucher for a free night between Jan – March.

That’s the long-winded explanation as to how we came to be at Chatsworth this weekend. With the voucher effectively making a two-night stay half-price, that’s what we went for.

Friday

Arriving a few minutes after the earliest arrival time on Friday, a quick lunch preceded a foray onto the Chatsworth Estate. I had expected to be limited to the footpath that runs through (that Mick, and my blog, tell me we used on our way from Dover to Cape Wrath in 2010), but not only were we able to access the estate via a gate in the back wall of the campsite, but the ‘welcome’ leaflet also told us we were free to roam the estate at large.

Nice day, if a bit parky.

Big house.

The sun was nearly at the horizon by the time we got back to Bertie.

Saturday

Before choosing a campsite at which to spend our voucher, I’d checked the parkrun map, and thus this morning’s first entertainment was set. Four weeks after returning to running post-surgery, today I was only ten minutes slower than the PB that I set last August, and it didn’t feel anywhere near as hard as last week’s 5k had. Progress in clawing back some fitness, I hope.

Somehow, neither of us (at least to our recollections) had ever been to Bakewell, and having read that the town car parks get rather busy, even mid-week in winter, we made haste in getting there before it got too busy. A good move, and the car park marshall greeted us by moving a cone to give us access to the only Bertie-sized space (there being no overhang behind any space, but this one had a bit of space in front due to a protruding wall).

We wandered. We went for breakfast. Breakfast was disappointing. The teapot held only two and a half cups (between the two of us), but at least they topped it up when asked. Breakfast took about a week and a half to arrive, and then Mick’s was luke warm. Objectively, mine was probably fine, but I should have paid more attention to the mention of ‘truffle’ in its description. Had it been a plate of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs I would have devoured it. As it was, it tasted of nothing but truffle oil and I disliked it to such an extent that I was only able to battle through half of it. This is unheard of, in that I cannot remember the last time I left half a plate of food – and certainly not when I’m paying good money for it!

My consolation prize was the browsing of a wool shop and then the impulsive purchase of a top in the Inov8 shop (the latter made Mick jealous, as the women’s model in the girly colour was discounted from £75 to £30; the men’s was full-price).

It’s a very pleasant town for a wander is Bakewell, with lots of old buildings. I’m sure that on a warmer, less rainy day we could have spent longer in its backstreets. As it was, after three hours we headed back to the campsite, just beating the 1pm rush of arrivals.

(Post blog note, 6 months later: it seems that I didn’t write anything about our final night and Sunday morning. I seem to recall that we went for a longer walk on the Chatsworth Estate before vacating the site by noon.)

The Fibroid Diaries - Part 4

 (Written on 18 January 2024)

Just a few days shy of being 3-months post-surgery, and I am not just all healed, but feeling almost entirely normal again. The only residual niggles are the numb area above the incision scar (the scar goes right across my lower abdomen, hip to hip and the numb area is a triangle above that, so not a small area) and the ongoing collection of fluid in the tissue above the scar. The numbness just feels odd. The fluid retention can get a little sore. Neither are big issues in the grand scheme of things.

The purpose of this post, however, is to remind myself in the future what the impact of the surgery has been, as I think it will be all too easy with the passage of time to forget how bad things had become pre-surgery. Indeed, pre-surgery I didn’t really appreciate how bad things had become; I’d probably been growing that mass for more than a decade, with its impact creeping up on me so slowly that I’d forgotten what ‘normal’ was.

The main two issues I had pre-surgery (‘main’ as in affected daily life the most) were having a bladder the size of a thimble (I exaggerate, but that’s how it felt), having something constantly pressing (or, if I was moving, then kicking) against that thimble of a bladder. The worst day I remember was during the World Championship Snooker last year when during one frame (admittedly an unusually long frame), I had to nip to the loo five times. I was always getting up at night, and by last spring it was up to four times a night. Then there was the crushed urethra, meaning when I could wee it was usually a slow trickle and sometimes I couldn’t wee at all. 

Now? Well, it’s quite marvellous! I can wee with gay abandon! And only a normal number of times per day. And I can run without a constant feeling of being kicked in the bladder. I’m sure that with time I will be able to visit the toilet and not think “Isn’t this amazing?!”, but I’m not there yet.

Even more incredibly, and completely unexpectedly, getting up at night is currently the exception rather than the rule.

The difference is such that even Mick exclaimed on Monday when, in Ironbridge, we walked for the best part of 2.5 hours then went for a pot of tea (out of which I got four large cups), then went back to Erica for lunch and a crossword, and at no point did I dive behind at bush nor nip off to the ladies.

Okay, enough enthusing (oversharing?) about having a full-size bladder with an uncrushed urethra. Onto other stuff we’ve been doing…