Rock and Rowel 26m 2013

What a great new event this was ! The food at the checkpoints and at the finish was the best I have seen and I have done a few of these type of events. It is standard to get sandwiches and/or cake but at this event they also had vegetarian wraps and at the halfway checkpoint we had an ice cream with strawberry topping :-) The ice cream was also available to finish off the lovely meal at the end. All of this for £10 ! The ice cream was very welcome on a hot day with the sun out for the first 20m. One of the refreshment stations also had cut up watermelon which was just great :-) The organisers also provided an extra refreshment station because of the heat.

One thing that could be improved was the route description. It was a bit concise and relied at lot on grid references. Luckily, the organisers also provided a gpx file which we downloaded to our Garmins. This meant that we had few problems, but we kept coming across people who had gone off course and others who kept having to stop to consult maps. Small parts of the route were flagged, but the majority of it had no markings. I think we would have made some major mistakes without the gpx file. But the possibility of making a mistake is part of the fun with these events and it certainly keep you concentrating on where you are going rather than fretting about your pace.

If you have done any of the Ripon 10m, the Jolly Holly Jog, the Fountains 10k or the Round Ripon Ultra, parts of the route will be familiar. I underestimated how hilly it was and assured Melanie that it wouldn't be too bad. The heat made the many short climbs a bit tougher and there seemed to be more climbs in the second half.

The course follows the Ripon Rowel footpath for some of the route and it also goes throughBrimham Rocks, an interesting collection of rocks stacked on top of each other. There were hordes of people swarming all over the rocks (and an ambulance was there presumably helping someone who had fallen off one). It was a bit tricky finding the checkpoint there as there were so many people about.

At one point we had a bit of an encounter with some bullocks who came trotting over to look at us. I had to try some bullock scaring techniques which seemed to work (wait for them to stop, wave arms, make a noise and advance a little). There were a few other fields with cows and bullocks in but they just ignored us or got out of the way.

We kept up a reasonable pace in the first half, but the heat and sun was sapping at our energy levels and we struggled a bit in the second half. After the meal at the finish, we went round the corner to the pub and finished off with some lovely cooling refreshment.

A great event, we shall be back

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Lakeland Trails marathon 2013

Two years ago I ran the Lakeland Trails marathon and it was a hot day. I missed last year's event, so it was back again to Coniston with the prospect of another hot run. Melanie did the half marathon last year and was keen to do the marathon this year - it would be her fourteenth marathon in just over a year, amazing !

In the Lakeland Trails there are usually two events, the Challenge and the Race. They follow the same course, but the Challenge goes off a bit sooner. It allows people to finish earlier in the day if they want to and also helps the organisers because the slower runners tend to enter the Challenge (but by no means are all the runners in the Challenge slow !).

I have been entering the Challenge for a while, it is good to see the faster runners finish. The difficulty with the Challenge at this event is that you must register the day before and the Challenge starts at 7am. It was this last point that Melanie was not too happy with. We had the alarm on for 4.30 even though we were staying not too far away in Kendal.

Saturday was hot all day and the forecast for Sunday was getting hotter every time we looked at it. So Melanie gradually came round to being relieved that we were starting early when the forecast was for it to be cooler (but still pretty hot).

Luckily the forecast wasn't quite accurate, as it was cloudy until about 11.30 on Sunday, though it was very humid. Still that was better than being cooked by the sun. So after getting to Tarn Hows and up most of the hills and down to the south end of the Lake, the sun finally came out and it became very hot. We then climbed up to Beacon Tarn and the climb was longer than I remembered. But we made it back to the finish and about twenty five minutes faster than my time two years ago.

I have to say that the race organiser, Graham, excelled himself at the end. The finish at any Lakeland Trail event tends to go round a field or park before you go under the finish gantry. This time we were approaching the field containing the finish via the next door field which was a campsite. I was hoping that there would be a gate we would run through that would lead us directly into the finish. There wasn't, so we ran past the the finish gantry (and slightly uphill !) and then finally turned into the finish field. Do we go directly to the finish gantry ? No, we run right round the finish field (and it's a big field !) until we get to the lakeside and then head towards the finish gantry. Do we turn in when we reach it ? No, of course not, we continue round the edge of the lake before finally turning into the finish. An amusing finish to a lovely scenic event, the terrain is tough to run on at times, but I would strongly recommend this race.

To cool down at the end, lots of runners including us, ended up in the Lake, that felt good.

Anita and Kathryn ran the half marathon and they started at 10, so they had a hot race !

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