Where was Erica? She spent the day at Moor Top car park at Grizedale Forest where, true to the information on the Forestry Commision website, the Pay and Display machine is currently covered and parking is free.
Weather: Contrary to the forecast, surprisingly sunny and dry. Bit breezy later in the day, but not the windiness of yesterday.
It probably goes without saying that the main focus of this trip is running*. It's now less than a month until my event, and just over a month until Mick's. Given that Mick's event is in the Lakes, he will benefit from training on the course - hence our choice of location for the next two weeks. For me, I can run anywhere as long as it has some undulations, but somewhere other than home is my preference (for the amount of ascent I need, my options at home are severely limited, particularly as we're now fully in nettle season).
Today was, for me, the longest run in my training programme and my chosen location was Grizedale Forest. I'd plotted two 10km routes, and I planned to start with one repetition of each, then choose my favourite to repeat 3 more times (total: 50km).
After a night of heavy showers, we woke to the sound of drumming on the roof. In other circumstances, I might have deferred the outing, but there are benefits to doing a long training run in the rain. A ridiculous amount of stuff was thus loaded into Erica (I didn't want an 'Oh, if only I'd picked up X' situation), and at around 0830 off we set for the 20-mile, 35-minute drive to Grizedale.
Our entry into the empty car park was greeted by another shower. It soon passed and, incredibly (given the forecast), I felt about five spots of rain for the whole of the rest of the day, instead having sunshine for much of it.
Mick joined me for the first lap, which involved a small unintentional detour. He also joined me for my final lap, which involved a tiny unintentional detour (even though I really ought to have known the route by then).
My second lap on the east side of the forest was soon aborted due to storm damage and I scurried back to the west side for the rest of the day. No hardship - it was a pleasant route.
Mick had soup, a peanut butter and banana wrap, and a cup of teateatea** waiting for me after lap 3, and more soup after lap 4. I also ate snacks every half an hour whilst on the move, and got through about 400ml of Tailwind per lap.
My main triumphs of the day were:
1) the amount I ate and drank, such that I didn't suffer a dip in energy at any point. In fact, my final lap was faster than my first.
2) the lack of damage to my feet, with just two tiny blisters, on the ends of toes on my right foot. One is literally the size of a pinhead, the other about two pinheads.
The main anti-triumphs of the day were:
1) the back pain. I woke up on the final morning of our last trip with a sore back, for no obvious reason. It's been sore off and on since, and I didn't spend yesterday in an entirely comfortable state. When we got back to Bertie I did some yoga moves and sciatic flossing, and it's okay again today.
2) the something-behind-the-knee. Gahhhh! Eleven months later, and it's back. I only felt it for the last 4km, and it wasn't as bad as last year, so hopefully it will settle down in the next 3.5 weeks. At the moment, this feels like the biggest threat to my 24-hour race.
The main lessons learnt:
1) Know how to use your technology in advance! (I'll write a separate post about this)
2) If you've got a spare gps watch, take it with you! (Given that I'd taken along 4 entire changes of clothing and five pairs of shoes, so I had options if something wasn't working out, it's ridiculous that I positively decided not to take the spare watch along. It would have been useful for two reasons.)
(*I'm using that term loosely. Both of our objectives are based on run/walking, so there's a lot of walking done on every outing.
**I tend to refer to any hot drink that involves steeping something in hot water as 'tea', and I don't generally drink caffeine. To distinguish real tea from these drinks, we call it 'teateatea'. Originally it was 'tea-flavoured-tea', which becamed shortened to 'teatea', then somehow, over the years, it gained an extra 'tea' in the middle.)
Weather: Contrary to the forecast, surprisingly sunny and dry. Bit breezy later in the day, but not the windiness of yesterday.
It probably goes without saying that the main focus of this trip is running*. It's now less than a month until my event, and just over a month until Mick's. Given that Mick's event is in the Lakes, he will benefit from training on the course - hence our choice of location for the next two weeks. For me, I can run anywhere as long as it has some undulations, but somewhere other than home is my preference (for the amount of ascent I need, my options at home are severely limited, particularly as we're now fully in nettle season).
Today was, for me, the longest run in my training programme and my chosen location was Grizedale Forest. I'd plotted two 10km routes, and I planned to start with one repetition of each, then choose my favourite to repeat 3 more times (total: 50km).
After a night of heavy showers, we woke to the sound of drumming on the roof. In other circumstances, I might have deferred the outing, but there are benefits to doing a long training run in the rain. A ridiculous amount of stuff was thus loaded into Erica (I didn't want an 'Oh, if only I'd picked up X' situation), and at around 0830 off we set for the 20-mile, 35-minute drive to Grizedale.
Our entry into the empty car park was greeted by another shower. It soon passed and, incredibly (given the forecast), I felt about five spots of rain for the whole of the rest of the day, instead having sunshine for much of it.
Mick joined me for the first lap, which involved a small unintentional detour. He also joined me for my final lap, which involved a tiny unintentional detour (even though I really ought to have known the route by then).
From the same viewpoint, laps 1 and 5.
Mick had soup, a peanut butter and banana wrap, and a cup of teateatea** waiting for me after lap 3, and more soup after lap 4. I also ate snacks every half an hour whilst on the move, and got through about 400ml of Tailwind per lap.
My main triumphs of the day were:
1) the amount I ate and drank, such that I didn't suffer a dip in energy at any point. In fact, my final lap was faster than my first.
2) the lack of damage to my feet, with just two tiny blisters, on the ends of toes on my right foot. One is literally the size of a pinhead, the other about two pinheads.
The main anti-triumphs of the day were:
1) the back pain. I woke up on the final morning of our last trip with a sore back, for no obvious reason. It's been sore off and on since, and I didn't spend yesterday in an entirely comfortable state. When we got back to Bertie I did some yoga moves and sciatic flossing, and it's okay again today.
2) the something-behind-the-knee. Gahhhh! Eleven months later, and it's back. I only felt it for the last 4km, and it wasn't as bad as last year, so hopefully it will settle down in the next 3.5 weeks. At the moment, this feels like the biggest threat to my 24-hour race.
The only other snap I took. Not sure what I was trying to capture.
The main lessons learnt:
1) Know how to use your technology in advance! (I'll write a separate post about this)
2) If you've got a spare gps watch, take it with you! (Given that I'd taken along 4 entire changes of clothing and five pairs of shoes, so I had options if something wasn't working out, it's ridiculous that I positively decided not to take the spare watch along. It would have been useful for two reasons.)
(*I'm using that term loosely. Both of our objectives are based on run/walking, so there's a lot of walking done on every outing.
**I tend to refer to any hot drink that involves steeping something in hot water as 'tea', and I don't generally drink caffeine. To distinguish real tea from these drinks, we call it 'teateatea'. Originally it was 'tea-flavoured-tea', which becamed shortened to 'teatea', then somehow, over the years, it gained an extra 'tea' in the middle.)
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