I’m taking part in the Virtual Lakeland 50 this week. It’s a far easier undertaking than the real thing*: rather than completing a set 50-mile route through the Lake District fells in 24 hours, the virtual event involves covering the same distance over the course of a week (between 20 – 26 July) in any location of the participants choosing.
After my mileages of April and May I thought “7 miles a day for a week? No problem!”. Then June went a little awry with the adductor strain. Then last week the organisers they would like as many people as possible to stage their week as if they were running between the real route’s checkpoints each day, which gave the following itinerary:
I liked the idea behind the request, so that’s what I’m doing. This is how it’s going so far:
Monday (virtually: Dalemain to Howtown; 11.2 miles):
My current go-to 11ish-mile route involves a mile along a pavementless B-road that can be at best unpleasant when it’s busy. It was fine during lockdown, but now that traffic has increased again, I reserve it for the quieter weekend mornings. As the event didn’t conveniently start on Saturday, and as I’m still avoiding the canal tow-path to the south of here (which was my pre-social distancing long-run location), my solution to this was to set the alarm for 0530 and be out the house by 0630, which would see me off the B-road before many cars were about.
What a treat the weather gave me…
Barely a hint of a breeze either
…and with my legs fresh from having had an easy week last week the miles passed easily by.
Tuesday (virtually:Howtown to Mardale; 9.4 miles):
I set my alarm for 0545, but woke up at 0300. When I was still awake at 0430 (the ‘why’ will tie-in with a separate post that I’ll write some time in the next week or so) I thought I may as well get up, have a bit of breakfast and get on with it. I was out the door 0525.
This was the day I was most concerned about, as I’ve not been in the practice of running these distances on consecutive days. I can thank the weather again for giving me a mental boost…
Who knew there was a canal on the fells between Howtown and Mardale?!
…and I was happy indeed with how the miles again slipped by almost unnoticed.
What an unseasonably cool start to the day for mid-July, though! Just 7 degrees. It doesn’t come across in those snaps, but the canal was steaming.
My 9.4 miles were done, and I was back home, by 7am, stepping over the unread note I’d left for Mick. He’d not missed me at all, and I woke him with a cup of tea a few minutes later.
Wednesday (virtually: Mardale to Kentmere; 6.5 miles):
Late on Monday it looked like our week was going to take a bit of a swerve, some packing was done and Bertie was made nearly ready for a trip. At the point that I got home from Tuesday’s run, I was fully expecting to be on my way to Blackpool before lunch and to be running along the seafront in St Anne’s on Wednesday morning. This ties in with the reason for Tuesday’s 3am start, and I’ll come back to it in another post, but for now the important point is that I didn’t wake up in St Anne’s, but at home. I say that I woke up, but that’s an exaggeration; the effort and lack of sleep was catching up with me, and my thighs were sore too. I opted for breakfast in bed, followed by a later start.
I had company as I stepped out of the door at 0845: Mick was to keep me company for the first mile and a half. I’d convinced myself that this was just a short day and would be a doddle, and that’s how it felt for the first couple of miles, but I didn’t have the distraction of a glorious blue sky (overcast, but at least it was dry and warmer) and I was also struggling with something really ridiculous – the notion of kilometres.
The organisers announced on Sunday that the results processing system required the evidence for each run to be uploaded showing the distance in kilometres. On Monday and Tuesday I ran with my Garmin set to miles, then changed it to metric to take a photo of the watch face to upload as evidence. I then decided that I could cope with the distance being in kilometres, so left it on that setting. Let’s just say that I didn’t do well with the sudden change of units and that this was not a good time to make the change!
The outing didn’t hit the ‘wow this is fantastic’ level of Monday or Tuesday, but neither was it awful. I arrived home thinking that Thursday’s run was an even easier one at just 5.6 miles, so it was a minor blow to realise my memory had skipped a day and that the next one was 7.3. The thighs weren’t getting any less sore, I was in need of more sleep than I was getting and I feared that Thursday’s run was going to be a grumpy “Let this be over right now!” sort of an affair.
Thursday (virtually: Kentmere to Ambleside; 7.3 miles)
How short a memory I have! Remember my comments on Monday about the B-road? Today I decided it’d be fine to go that way (only 1km along it this time) even with a start time of 0730. It wasn’t fine. Not at all. Particularly the bit where I had to hop onto the verge (mind those nettles Gayle!) to wait for a bus and 500 cars (it may have only been 8…) to go past. It wasn’t just the quantity of traffic either; the average speed of vehicles is remarkably faster than it was during lockdown.
Aside from the traffic on the B-road, I had an unexpectedly fabulous time! I skipped along seemingly effortlessly, even on the final cross-country-over-a-little-lump bit of the route (during which I wondered whether white road trainers were best choice of footwear in view of the amount of sheep poo littering the field). I got home happy, but fearing that my accidentally faster pace on this one may result in regret tomorrow…
(to be continued - I'll report back on Sunday about the final 3 runs.)
(*The real event, of course, got cancelled this year due to coronavirus. Taking place at the same time (both virtually and, in a normal year, in reality) the Lakeland 100 is a far more taxing undertaking, by virtue of being more than twice the distance as, despite its name, it’s actually 105 miles. In a normal year, the cut-off for the LL100 is 40 hours (vs 24 hours for the LL50).
After my mileages of April and May I thought “7 miles a day for a week? No problem!”. Then June went a little awry with the adductor strain. Then last week the organisers they would like as many people as possible to stage their week as if they were running between the real route’s checkpoints each day, which gave the following itinerary:
I liked the idea behind the request, so that’s what I’m doing. This is how it’s going so far:
Monday (virtually: Dalemain to Howtown; 11.2 miles):
My current go-to 11ish-mile route involves a mile along a pavementless B-road that can be at best unpleasant when it’s busy. It was fine during lockdown, but now that traffic has increased again, I reserve it for the quieter weekend mornings. As the event didn’t conveniently start on Saturday, and as I’m still avoiding the canal tow-path to the south of here (which was my pre-social distancing long-run location), my solution to this was to set the alarm for 0530 and be out the house by 0630, which would see me off the B-road before many cars were about.
What a treat the weather gave me…
…and with my legs fresh from having had an easy week last week the miles passed easily by.
Tuesday (virtually:Howtown to Mardale; 9.4 miles):
I set my alarm for 0545, but woke up at 0300. When I was still awake at 0430 (the ‘why’ will tie-in with a separate post that I’ll write some time in the next week or so) I thought I may as well get up, have a bit of breakfast and get on with it. I was out the door 0525.
This was the day I was most concerned about, as I’ve not been in the practice of running these distances on consecutive days. I can thank the weather again for giving me a mental boost…
…and I was happy indeed with how the miles again slipped by almost unnoticed.
What an unseasonably cool start to the day for mid-July, though! Just 7 degrees. It doesn’t come across in those snaps, but the canal was steaming.
My 9.4 miles were done, and I was back home, by 7am, stepping over the unread note I’d left for Mick. He’d not missed me at all, and I woke him with a cup of tea a few minutes later.
Wednesday (virtually: Mardale to Kentmere; 6.5 miles):
Late on Monday it looked like our week was going to take a bit of a swerve, some packing was done and Bertie was made nearly ready for a trip. At the point that I got home from Tuesday’s run, I was fully expecting to be on my way to Blackpool before lunch and to be running along the seafront in St Anne’s on Wednesday morning. This ties in with the reason for Tuesday’s 3am start, and I’ll come back to it in another post, but for now the important point is that I didn’t wake up in St Anne’s, but at home. I say that I woke up, but that’s an exaggeration; the effort and lack of sleep was catching up with me, and my thighs were sore too. I opted for breakfast in bed, followed by a later start.
I had company as I stepped out of the door at 0845: Mick was to keep me company for the first mile and a half. I’d convinced myself that this was just a short day and would be a doddle, and that’s how it felt for the first couple of miles, but I didn’t have the distraction of a glorious blue sky (overcast, but at least it was dry and warmer) and I was also struggling with something really ridiculous – the notion of kilometres.
The organisers announced on Sunday that the results processing system required the evidence for each run to be uploaded showing the distance in kilometres. On Monday and Tuesday I ran with my Garmin set to miles, then changed it to metric to take a photo of the watch face to upload as evidence. I then decided that I could cope with the distance being in kilometres, so left it on that setting. Let’s just say that I didn’t do well with the sudden change of units and that this was not a good time to make the change!
The outing didn’t hit the ‘wow this is fantastic’ level of Monday or Tuesday, but neither was it awful. I arrived home thinking that Thursday’s run was an even easier one at just 5.6 miles, so it was a minor blow to realise my memory had skipped a day and that the next one was 7.3. The thighs weren’t getting any less sore, I was in need of more sleep than I was getting and I feared that Thursday’s run was going to be a grumpy “Let this be over right now!” sort of an affair.
Thursday (virtually: Kentmere to Ambleside; 7.3 miles)
How short a memory I have! Remember my comments on Monday about the B-road? Today I decided it’d be fine to go that way (only 1km along it this time) even with a start time of 0730. It wasn’t fine. Not at all. Particularly the bit where I had to hop onto the verge (mind those nettles Gayle!) to wait for a bus and 500 cars (it may have only been 8…) to go past. It wasn’t just the quantity of traffic either; the average speed of vehicles is remarkably faster than it was during lockdown.
Aside from the traffic on the B-road, I had an unexpectedly fabulous time! I skipped along seemingly effortlessly, even on the final cross-country-over-a-little-lump bit of the route (during which I wondered whether white road trainers were best choice of footwear in view of the amount of sheep poo littering the field). I got home happy, but fearing that my accidentally faster pace on this one may result in regret tomorrow…
Virtual progress to date
(to be continued - I'll report back on Sunday about the final 3 runs.)
(*The real event, of course, got cancelled this year due to coronavirus. Taking place at the same time (both virtually and, in a normal year, in reality) the Lakeland 100 is a far more taxing undertaking, by virtue of being more than twice the distance as, despite its name, it’s actually 105 miles. In a normal year, the cut-off for the LL100 is 40 hours (vs 24 hours for the LL50).
Very impressive.
ReplyDeleteI like the graph. Is it by chance a Gayle production? Because it has the Montane logo I was doubtful, but not for any underestimation of Gayle Graph Skills.
No, it's a bit fancy for it to be a Gayle production. I nicked it off the Lakeland 50 & 100 Facebook Page.
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